Thankfully I was able to recover my data after purchasing ReclaiMe File Recovery, which is the only product capable of recovering data from a Storage Spaces volume as of a year ago.
I found that Storage Spaces volumes were so different from typical mirrors, that my existing file recovery software won't work. With the other drive actually failing, I was left with trying to recover data from the "Retired" drive. Once a disk is marked Retired, there is no way I could find to reverse that status, short of wiping the drive. Storage Spaces incorrectly marked the working disk as Unhealthy, and eventually Retired it. Out of a mirrored pool of two, one disk started to fail. I actually switched from Storage Spaces to a mirrored volume on dynamic disks after almost losing all of my data. But in the spirit of this article (and what most people seem to do in instead of keeping backups), here is my experience with Storage Spaces. Yes, RAID is not a backup, and you should be keeping backups.
Maybe a full disk image weekly or even monthly, and a profile/docs/email backup daily.įirst, lets get this out of the way.
A 2TB USB 3.0 external drive can be had for less than $100 these days (meaning it's not much more than buying a second drive for the PC in the first place), and periodic baclkups can be done using that. All that is beyond the home user.īut at any rate, I think a better option for many home users is to leverage disk backups to external drives (or home NAS or a large USB thumb drive) that can then be stored/secured elsewhere, or leverage cloud backup (if you have the luxury of time to restore from there). Each drive holds two days worth of backups, so at any given time I have 10 business days worth of images that I can restore form, or extract qaccidently deleted/overwritten files from. Everything is backed up to a roation of 2TB drives, one for each day of the week. I also have "master" PC that can be used as a source for the latest disk images for use on other PCs in the office. Instead I use full disk backups of all servers and mission-critical PCs. I've never really been a fan of RAID, and don't use it in my office network. Me and other IT pros have been having a heck of a time in recent weeks with numerous issues related to WSUS, corrupted upgrades, corrupted user profiles, etc. Not that this is a bad idea, but this methodology does not protect against:Ģ) Significant damage to the device including both drivesģ) Severe viral infections that may damage, delete, or encrypt filesĤ) Microsofts own barrage of messed up updates that corrupt systems.
Windows 10 on Windows Central – All you need to know.
More on Windows 10 resourcesįor more tips, coverage, and answers on Windows 10, you can visit the following resources:
If you accidentally delete a file from one drive, the action will also replicate to the second drive.įinally, it's worth pointing out that thanks to the Windows 10 flexibility, you can also use Storage Spaces to create a mirrored volume.ĭo you use any form of file redundancy on your computer? Tell us in the comments below. It's not designed to offer speed or performance like other RAID array levels.Īlthough mirroring can protect your data, it's not a replacement for a data backup. The primary purpose of a mirror setup is to provide data redundancy to protect your files from a hard drive failure. Then simply repeat the process whenever a drive fails (which hopefully shouldn't be very often). Click Yes to convert the basic disks to dynamic disks, which is a requirement to create a mirrored volume on Windows.Īfter completing the steps above, Windows 10 will synchronize the data onto the new drive.