Windows 8 Storage Spaces

Source Brunei Times

MOST of our precious information are stored in various forms in computers, be it documents, digital pictures, videos, etc. Depending on the type and sensitivity of the files, your storage and resiliency requirements will be different and immense.

In Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, Microsoft has introduced a feature called Storage Spaces. Storage Spaces is a new Windows technology that allows you to virtualise storage to achieve scale and resiliency. In Windows 8, one may add several internal, as well as external, hard drives and create a storage pool. This pool can be divided into multiple virtual drives called Storage Spaces.

Once these Storage Spaces are created, they can be accessed through the file explorer (previously known as the Windows Explorer). Since this is a flexible solution, when a Storage Space is nearing its storage limit, one can add more hard drives and increase the storage pool capacity.

When Storage Spaces are configured in Windows 8, there are several types of resiliency options available. By configuring these options correctly, your information will be protected against one or two hard drive failures. There are four types of resiliency available:

1) No resiliency: This will provide the maximum space usage, but there will be no protection in the event of drive failure.
2) Two-way mirror: This writes two copies of your data, and helps to protect you from a single drive failure.
3) Three-way mirror: This writes three copies of your data, helping to protect you from two simultaneous drive failures.
4) Parity: A parity storage space writes your data with parity information, and helps protect you from a single drive failure.

Windows 8 storage spaces can be configured very easily within the Windows control panel. As soon as the storage spaces feature is opened, it will automatically detect the available hard drives and present you with easy to understand options.

Windows 8 Storage Spaces comes as a handy and cool feature which is very useful in a work and home environment.