How do you recover data/repair from a drive failure in Windows 10 Storage Spaces?

curt thurston 0 Reputation points
2024-04-17T07:47:30.8533333+00:00

I have 4X 4TB drives configured as RAID 1 (mirroring). I assumed that meant that a copy of the data was also stored on the other drives since only 8TB of the 16TB is available. I ID'd the failing drive and replaced it. I'm unable to remove the drive from the pool even though it's physically uninstalled. All 4 HD's (3 original, one new) show up as OK in Storage Spaces. I don't see the pool in Explorer. The new one with 0,23% used says OK, with the options "rename" (like the other 3) and "prepare for removal". How do I access the existing data that's on the 75% of the original pool, or get the pool to show up? I tried Drive optimization but it sat at 0% for hours. What's the point of RAID if all your data is lost every time there's a failure. The is the 2nd time I've had a SS failure. First time I just said good bye to all the data, reformatted everything and started over. I'm beginning to think I'll just have 16TB of space and use one or two for daily incremental backups. Would RAID 5 allow me to access data after a single drive failure? TIA

Windows 10
Windows 10
A Microsoft operating system that runs on personal computers and tablets.
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  1. Ian Xue (Shanghai Wicresoft Co., Ltd.) 29,891 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2024-04-19T05:23:31.2166667+00:00

    Hi curt,

    Thanks for your post. Based on my research, to recover data/repair from a drive failure in Windows 10 Storage Spaces, you can follow the experience that took effect before:

    0. Make a Backup

    1. Delete the Pool

    At this point, my only option was to delete the pool so I could troubleshoot the individual disks. And, hopefully, rebuild it with good disks.

    There’s a Delete Pool option in the control panel, which does exactly what you think it would.

    2. Identify and fix the Problem Disk

    Check if Storage Spaces and Windows had clearly identified the problem disk with model number and serial. Usually, all disks are mounted such that couldn’t see any identifying information at all.

    Then I restarted and looked at the computer firmware. Turn the computer off. A few minutes of tracing cables around. Suspect disk identified!

    After that, we completely unplugged it and checked it wasn’t listed.

    Back into Windows to check if all disks listed in Disk Management.

    3. Ensure the Disks were OK

    After the possibility of disk errors and corruption, I decided a full test scan was in order. I formatted all 4 4TB disks, and then ran chkdsk /f /r /b on them (in parallel of course) to ensure the whole disk could be read successfully. All passed without problem.

    4. Re-Create the Pool and Copy Data Back

    Confident my disks were ok. Then re-created the Storage Spaces pool.

    And then bulk copied my data back with robocopy /r:0 /w:0 /e.

    Reference: https://blog.ligos.net/2017-12-11/Repairing-Storage-Spaces-After-Drive-Failure.html

    Best Regards,

    Ian Xue

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