How to Add Disks to Storage Pool for Storage Spaces in Windows 10
Storage Spaces helps protect your data from drive failures and extend storage over time as you add drives to your PC. You can use Storage Spaces to group two or more drives together in a storage pool and then use capacity from that pool to create virtual drives called storage spaces. These storage spaces typically store two copies of your data so if one of your drives fails, you still have an intact copy of your data. If you run low on capacity, just add more drives to the storage pool.
These disk drives can be internal or external hard drives, or solid state drives. You can use a variety of types of drives with Storage Spaces, including USB, SATA, and SAS drives.
See also:
- Storage Spaces in Windows 10 | Microsoft Support
- Storage Spaces overview | Microsoft Docs
- Default cluster size for NTFS, FAT, and exFAT | Microsoft Support
This tutorial will show you how to add disks to a storage pool for storage spaces in Windows 10.
You must be signed in as an administrator to add drives to the storage pool.
Issue with some Storage Spaces configurations after updating to Windows 10, version 2004 and Windows Server, version 2004 | Microsoft Support
Workaround and recovery steps for issue with some Parity Storage Spaces after updating to Windows 10, version 2004 and Windows Server, version 2004 | Microsoft Support
Contents
- Option One: Add Disk(s) to a Storage Pool in Settings
- Option Two: Add Disk(s) to a Storage Pool in Control Panel
This option is only available starting with Windows 10 build 21296.
1 Add or connect the disk drive(s) that you want to add to the storage pool.
2 Open Settings, click/tap on the System icon.
3 Click/tap on Storage on the left side, and click/tap on the Manage Storage Spaces link on the right side. (see screenshot below)
4 Perform the following actions to add disk(s) to a storage pool: (see screenshot below)
A) Expand open a storage pool you want to add disk(s) to.
B) Expand open Physical disks for the storage pool.
C) Click/tap on Add disks to storage pool.
5 Select (check) the disk(s) (drives) you want to add to the storage pool, check (default) or uncheck to optimize drive usage to spread existing data across all drives in the pool for what you want, and then click/tap on Add when ready. (see screenshot below)
When you add new drives to an existing pool, it's a good idea to optimize drive usage. This will move some of your data to the newly added drive to make the best use of the pool's capacity.
Windows will permanently delete all partitions and files on selected formatted drives (disks).
Be sure to back up anything you do not want to lose to another disk first.
6 The selected disk(s) will now be added to the storage pool. (see screenshot below)
If you like, you can change the maximum storage space size to what you want since you just added disk(s) to have more space available.
7 You can now close Settings if you like.
1 Add or connect the disk drive(s) that you want to add to the storage pool.
2 Open the Control Panel (icons view), and click/tap on the Storage Spaces icon.
3 Click/tap on the Change settings button, click/tap on Yes if prompted by UAC, and click/tap on the Add drives link for the storage pool you want to add drives to. (see screenshot below)
4 Select (check) the disk(s) (drives) you want to add to the storage pool, check (default) or uncheck to optimize drive usage to spread existing data across all drives for what you want, and then select Add drives. (see screenshot below)
When you add new drives to an existing pool, it's a good idea to optimize drive usage. This will move some of your data to the newly added drive to make the best use of the pool's capacity.
Windows will permanently delete all partitions and files on selected formatted drives (disks).
Be sure to back up anything you do not want to lose to another disk first.
5 The selected disk(s) (drives) will now be added to the storage pool. (see screenshot below)
If you like, you can click/tap on the Change link for the storage space above to change the maximum storage space size to what you want since you just added a drive(s) to have more space available.
That's it,
Shawn Brink
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