Storage Spaces

Storage Spaces is an alternative to RAID and a standard feature in Essentials. It is designed to address three aspects of storage: Firstly, on a Windows computer each hard drive normally has a separate drive letter to identify it. For instance, the first drive is the C: drive, the second is the D: drive, the third is the E: drive and so on. However, it is more convenient, particularly in a network, if drives can be pooled together to appear as a single large volume. This makes it easier to find things by removing the requirement to know upon which physical drive a particular file or folder is located:

Secondly, like RAID, Storage Spaces provides a degree of protection against data loss in the event of a drive failing. Multiple copies of files are stored on different drives; if a drive fails then a copy from a different one is automatically used. The failed drive can then be replaced and added back to the storage pool. Finally, the pool can easily be added to in order to provide more storage space, without excessive disruption or reconfiguration. One important thing to note is that the drives can largely be of any type; for instance, external USB hard drives can be connected to the computer and added to the storage pool. In some respects Storage Spaces is more flexible than RAID, as well as being cheaper to implement. However, performance may not be so high (not necessarily an issue in a small setup).