Storage Spaces - trying to create a Raid 0 with Powershell

My problem is pretty simple, I set up a 2 X 960 Evo SSD simple volume with Storage Spaces and performance was no better than using the drives singly.

Some research seems to say that using the Storage Spaces gui in Win 10 only sets the columns to 1 when what I need is 2.

Number Friendly Name    Serial Number                    HealthStatus         OperationalStatus      Total Size Partition

                                                                                                                Style

------ -------------    -------------                    ------------         -----------------      ---------- ----------

0      Crucial_CT275...         1631138774D7             Healthy              Online                  256.17 GB GPT

3      ST3000DM008-2...             ZA508H69             Healthy              Online                    2.73 TB GPT

4      NVMe Samsung ... 0025_3858_81B0_B1E6.             Healthy              Online                  232.89 GB GPT

1      Samsung SSD 8... S3Y9NX0K837728B                  Healthy              Online                  232.89 GB GPT

2      Samsung SSD 8... S3Y9NX0K837729P                  Healthy              Online                  232.89 GB GPT

DeviceId FriendlyName              SerialNumber    MediaType CanPool OperationalStatus HealthStatus Usage          Size

-------- ------------              ------------    --------- ------- ----------------- ------------ -----          ----

2        Samsung SSD 860 EVO 250GB S3Y9NX0K837729P SSD       True    OK                Healthy      Auto-Select ...9 GB

1        Samsung SSD 860 EVO 250GB S3Y9NX0K837728B SSD       True    OK                Healthy      Auto-Select ...9 GB

0        Crucial_CT275MX300SSD1    1631138774D7    SSD       True    OK                Healthy      Auto-Select ...7 GB

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-StorageSubsystem

FriendlyName                               HealthStatus OperationalStatus

------------                               ------------ -----------------

Windows Storage on AMD-RYZEN-2700X-Desktop Healthy      OK

I am trying to Raid ) the two Samsung Drives, I am way over my head here but I am trying my best. The Command I am trying to make work is....

New-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName SuperSpeedDelight -StoragePoolFriendlyName Windows Storage on AMD-RYZEN-2700X-Desktop -NumberOfColumns 2 -ResiliencySettingName simple -UseMaximumSize

I do not understand what should be next to Friendlyname or StoragePoolFriendlyName (I feel I have tried every combination)and the Samsung drives being identically named is also making my brain hurt.

I also do not understand how to tell it what drives to use

If anyone could help me with this I would be eternally grateful.  I think I can just do this in disk management but if I understand correctly this way will make use of trim, and even if it does not I will be able to add to the pool in the future once I understand how to set it up.

Thank you in advance


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Answer
Answer

You first have to make a Storage Pool with the name of "Windows Storage on AMD-RYZEN-2700X-Desktop"
Remove all volumes from the drives you want to include in the Storage Pool, it can be done with Disk Management


*you can do RAID 0 (striped volume) easily with Disk Management, but it's slightly slower and leaves you with two drive letters in places like Task Manager and other software tools


If you want to stay away from the command line interface as much as possible;

- Search "Manage Storage Spaces" or find Storage Spaces in the control panel 

- Click on "Create a new pool and storage space"

- Select the drives you want to use and click "Create pool"

- On the next screen that is to set up the way you want to implement the pool hit Cancel

- Now you have a Storage pool ready, if you want rename it to something you want  like "Windows Storage on AMD-RYZEN-2700X-Desktop"

- Run PowerShell as Administrator and use the command you have but with parentheses around the names that have spaces in them

New-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName SuperSpeedDelight -StoragePoolFriendlyName "Windows Storage on AMD-RYZEN-2700X-Desktop" -NumberOfColumns 2 -ResiliencySettingName simple -UseMaximumSize

- Now to go Disk Management and right click on the new Disk just created and Initialize Disk (left side of the column), then Right click on the partition area and create a new Simple Volume, Boom! your done

I had a few drives laying around and I did exactly that on my system while writing this, done with Windows 10 Pro for Workstations 1809

Fair warning, software RAID takes CPU cycles and IMO isn't too bad with mechanical HDDs (about 5-20% depending on your CPU) but SSDs will use much more of the CPU. So if you not planning to for something like scrubbing 4K videos where's both the CPU and Storage are used at the same time i can see a downside. Also, depending on how you do the hardware RAID it might be slower than software.

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Last updated July 16, 2021 Views 4,232 Applies to: