Windows 10 When Quits

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

The ONE thing that could be of interest to make W7 users migrate to W10 is the STORAGE SPACES feature incorporated from all releases of Windows 8 onwards.

With people having loads of HDD's around these days the crazy scheme of Drive C, D, E etc is becoming no longer fit for purpose (if it ever were in the first place).

Storage spaces allow you to aggregate numbers of HDD's (dynamically too) to "Storage Spaces" or Pools and unlike conventional RAID the HDD's can be of DIFFERENT sizes too. Great for large multi-media libraries for example --you could have say a 1.2TB Movie / Audio library spread out over 4 X 500 GB HDD's. The OS handles all the physical layouts so you just access your library in the normal way with File explorer. You can also use part of the space like RAID for data integrity -- but unlike RAID volumes can be of different sizes.

Note - you can also use EXTERNAL HDD's too for storage spaces - so those nice 2 TB external USB drives can be aggregated to say 2 X 2 TB (4 TB storage space). This makes a nice area plus part for recovery for those fast USB 3 drives.

I'm surprised hardly anything has been mentioned about this incredibly useful addition.

Cheers
jimbo

You can do that now in Windows 7: Spanned, striped and mirrored volumes. What is the difference?

Geneo said:

You can do that now in Windows 7: Spanned, striped and mirrored volumes. What is the difference?

Storage Spaces is not RAID. Raid has many limitations, such as requiring that disks be the same size, and they are more difficult to expand. You have to add the disk to the array, extend the array, then extend the volume in Windows. Storage Spaces works by "over committing" the volume in the first place, and you can add drives of any size and it will automatically figure out how to best use them. No resizing of the volume, and it just works.

It supplies the same functionality, though better features. It appears to be it slices up hard drive space in slabs of 256MB and uses those for units of string or eredundancy.

While it appears to be much more attractive than standard raid, it would not be something that would get me off of Windows 7 by itself, since I can get the performance and redundancy already either through Intel RST or Windows (I use RST software raid myself).

I will have to try it out in place of my 2TB backup raid0 array sometime.

What's the difference in consumer preview versus tech preview. I know you have to remove tech preview. Do you have to remove consumer preview too. I want to try it, but I'm afraid i'll screw up things when i try to remove it.

I thought I read that tech preview had to be uninstalled april 15. Are you saying I could go ahead with tech preview now, then upgrade to consumer preview end on month, then upgrade to the final product when fully released. I am really wanting to start using w10 asap and stay with it. But I don't want to jump in too soon and regret. Advice?????

billberry12 said:

What's the difference in consumer preview versus tech preview. I know you have to remove tech preview. Do you have to remove consumer preview too. I want to try it, but I'm afraid i'll screw up things when i try to remove it.

The consumer preview is just a more mature version, with (hopefully) less bugs, and more features.

You will eventually have to remove it, unless you upgrade to the final version, which MS has said they will offer an upgrade path... still, I would start over from scratch as that is the best option.

You can also look for this path,
Upcoming Windows 10 Technical Preview build include ISOs
I would imagine the update way will create a restore point to remove the build if you want too,
How reliable that restore point is :/

billberry12 said:

What's the difference in consumer preview versus tech preview. I know you have to remove tech preview. Do you have to remove consumer preview too. I want to try it, but I'm afraid i'll screw up things when i try to remove it.

Technical Preview (TP): Released to a limited audience, i.e., Windows Insider Program. Limited? At last count I noted that 1,500,000 are testing and about 450,000 are very actively testing and providing feedback to Microsoft. Generally those using a TP are very knowledgeable about computers in general.

Consumer Preview(CP): Released to the masses. I'm guessing that "the masses" won't be required to join the Insider Program. Generally those using the CP are not a whole lot knowledgeable about computers in general.

I think the Tech Preview equates to "beta". Whether it's called Technical Preview (TP) or Beta, there are regular new builds, most of which stay internal . . . once a certain "milestone" has been reached, a new TP will be released. Our next one will be on January 21.

So far, each successive TP has been buggy, buggy, buggy! However, I'm betting that the January 21 TP will be a whole lot less buggy than in the past and will have many, many more features. I'm guessing here (as a longtime Beta Tester [BT]) since the change from Beta to TP could encompass more than a name change.

So, at some point, the developers will decide that the TP is ready for CP. So, it's thrown out there. And here's where the rubber meets the road! There ain't no way to say it nicely; consumers aren't very smart when it comes to operating systems and computers and if it can be broken, it will be. That said, not only are consumers included in the CP, but also people like the denizens here in TenForums, IT people, corporate entities, etc., etc.

When the time comes to switch from TP to CP, we'll be told what we need to do. As always, when working with new stuff, "Expect the unexpected!"