How To Set Up Ssd And Hdd Together

I take built up a rather large collection of movies and TV shows that I've ripped from Blu-ray discs. Every few years, I notice I need a bigger hard drive to hold them all, and with the introduction of 4K Blu-ray, even my multi-terabyte drive is bursting at the seams. If merely at that place was a better way to organize and consolidate all these files. Enter Windows' Storage Spaces.

How Storage Spaces Work

The Storage Spaces characteristic aims to help with situations like mine: instead of spreading your files beyond multiple drives in a disorganized fashion, you tin can combine multiple hard drives into a puddle that Windows sees as ane unified volume—with one bulldoze letter of the alphabet.

Storage Spaces also permit you to add redundancy: if i drive fails, yous can popular in a new i and rebuild your storage space without losing any data. (This is like to a backup, merely it'southward non the same, and you should still have a remote, versioned backup in addition to back-up if your information is truly of import.)

If you lot've heard of RAID, Storage Spaces is like, merely it's performed entirely in software—no need for an actress hardware RAID bill of fare(Opens in a new window). The performance of your storage space won't be equally fast equally it would be with a RAID card, only information technology'southward significantly cheaper and easier to implement when y'all're just getting started with these types of pooling technologies.

How to Create a Storage Infinite

To create a storage space in Windows, open up the Start menu, type "storage spaces," and choose the Manage Storage Spaces tool. Later on opening the Control Console, click Create a New Pool and Storage Space and Windows will present you lot with a list of drives attached to your computer.

They won't have their bulldoze letters listed, then click the View Files button to make extra sure you're selecting the disks you want. Any drive you utilize with Storage Spaces will be erased, and so y'all definitely don't want to cull the incorrect one!

Create a storage puddle

When you're ready, click Create Pool. If you see any errors, y'all may need to close programs, or even clean the disk from the command line before continuing.

Y'all take a few options when setting upwardly a new pool. A Simple pool volition combine the drives into i storage volume, with no redundancy. I generally don't recommend this method unless you have a robust backup system in place—in a simple pool, one failed bulldoze will mean losing all your data in the pool.

Two-Way Mirror and Three-Way Mirror crave more drives for the same amount of usable space. A two-way mirror requires at least two drives, and a three-way mirror requires 5.

All the same, they also introduce redundancy: your data is stored on multiple drives at a time, so if ane drive fails, your data is yet intact, and yous can popular a new drive in without skipping a beat. (In the case of Three-Way Mirror, you tin lose two drives at in one case without losing whatsoever information.)

Create a storage infinite

Parity is sort of a compromise between the above options. Yous get more usable space than you would from the same number of mirrored drives, only you still go back-up thanks to parity bits(Opens in a new window)—tiny pieces of information that assistance rebuild information if one drive goes dead.

(Parity is a somewhat complex concept, just this video(Opens in a new window) is a pretty decent beginner explanation of how it works, if you lot're interested.) The downside is that parity is much slower, so information technology isn't ideal for information you actively utilize often.

Since I'grand merely using this for basic storage and media, and I'm somewhat limited in the number of drives I have available, I'k going with Parity. With three 8TB drives in Parity fashion, I get nigh fourteen.5TB of usable infinite, which is enough for my electric current needs. But if y'all need faster storage, you may want a mirror instead, since it'll be quicker to write information (and quicker to rebuild if a drive fails).

Notation that sure earlier versions of Windows offered the option for a ReFS storage space, but this was removed from consumer versions of Windows 10. If y'all take Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, yous tin can use Microsoft's newer resilient file arrangement.

When you're ready, click Create Storage Infinite—that'due south all it takes. Your new volume should exist immediately accessible, and you can offset copying information to it.

How to Add a New Bulldoze to Your Storage Space

For now, y'all're all done—you tin use your computer as normal. If there comes a day where yous run low on space again and want to add together even more storage to your pool, Storage Spaces makes it easy.

Manage storage spaces

Head back to the Manage Storage Spaces folio and click the Change Settings push button. And then, next to your current pool, click the Add Drives push button.

Select your drive (once again, it will be erased, so back it upwards offset!) and brand sure the Optimize Drive Usage box is checked—this volition motility some of your data to the new drive so it's spread across all your drives optimally.

Select drives

Click the Add Drives push button, and once Windows is finished moving that data, you'll have even more infinite to work with.

In that location's a lot more to Storage Spaces than what nosotros've covered here, so when y'all're ready to become more advanced with it, be sure to search effectually to see the extra features you can enable through PowerShell. For now, bask your much larger pool of drives!

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-combine-multiple-hard-drives-with-windows-storage-spaces

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