Storage Spaces Mirror 2 Drives?

I'm hoping someone here might have experience with mirroring 2 drives in Windows 10. I'm reading How-to's but some of my basic questions remain unanswered.

I have an SSD (C) used for the OS and loading apps and a 2TB drive that holds for all my files, images and videos, etc.

I want to add a second 2TB drive and create a Storage Spaces 'Mirror' setup to offer redundancy in case the D drive fails. (I also have off-site of backups). From what I've read the mirrored drives will need to be formatted so I will have to backup and re-copy all the current data onto the Mirrored set.

But here's the question:

Will a single mirrored drive behave like a single drive if it's removed from the set and connected to another computer?

Does the file and folder structure of one of those mirrored drives offer access to the files if it's removed and accessed using a removable SATA dock on another computer?

Thanks for any help with this question.

It's a bit pointless as a lot of space will be wasted and if one is infected so will the other. If you use disk imaging you can have lots of backup spanning a few months that is creating images not cloning

Hi,

Will a single mirrored drive behave like a single drive if it's removed from the set and connected to another computer?

Does the file and folder structure of one of those mirrored drives offer access to the files if it's removed and accessed using a removable SATA dock on another computer?

No and no.
Storage Space will convert the two HDDs into Dynamic Disks. If you remove one then that volume is broken an can no longer be read from.

See also:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...(v=vs.85).aspx

If you use disk imaging you can have lots of backup spanning a few months that is creating images not cloning

Yep. All it the takes is an installed copy of the backup software where the image can then be loaded. Macrium Reflect would be perfect for that.

Cheers,

I thought that when you 'mirrored' one disk with another the same data would simply be written to both disks simultaneously.

Hi,

Sure but the file table is different compared to a basic disk so this idea won't work for what you want to do.
Basically you create a "pool" of two disks, in your case a two way mirror.

You can move this "pool" from one machine to another but it not just a part of it.

Cheers,

fdegrove said:

Hi,
Sure but the file table is different compared to a basic disk so this idea won't work for what you want to do.
Basically you create a "pool" of two disks, in your case a two way mirror. You can move this "pool" from one machine to another but it not just a part of it.

Thanks everyone for the info. So, if one disk fails then the mirror can be restored - but each disk on it's own cannot be accessed as a traditional disk.

I'm not looking for a solution that's virus proof nor one that would survive a loss of the whole computer (fire, theft, etc..). External backups will still be done - just not as often.

Hi,

Thanks everyone for the info. So, if one disk fails then the mirror can be restored - but each disk on it's own cannot be accessed as a traditional disk.

You could always give it a try but in case of a mirrored drive I doubt it.
A traditional "pool" of a number of disks can be broken up and hooked up to a different machine BTW.

This is how it works:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/...nd-efficiency/

Cheers,

mirroring isnt virus proof as if you get a virus its mirrored to the other drive with images you can have several known clean one and roll back if an update goes wrong if an update goes wrong on mirror you have no roll back

Hi,

The idea is to mirror storage space, not the OS.

Cheers,

Same thing is true get ransomwere and all data is encrypted