When you attach a new hard disk to your PC, it will usually show up in File Explorer accompanied by a new drive letter. We assume anyone reading this book at least understands this basic Windows functionality.
You can also display this handy menu by typing Winkey + X.
Of course, things aren’t always this simple. Most PCs need to be shut down before internal hard disks can be installed, and sometimes when you add an internal or external storage device, it simply doesn’t show up in Explorer. If this is the case, you must use the Disk Management tool to format or otherwise enable the disk. The quickest way to run Disk Management is to mouse into the lower-left corner of the screen, from either the Start screen or the Windows desktop, right-click to display the new Windows 8 power user menu shown in Figure 11-1, and select Disk Management.
Figure 11-1: A new power user menu provides quick access to useful but infrequently needed tools.
Disk Management, shown in Figure 11-2, shows the various physical disks that are connected to your PC and graphically displays how each is partitioned. For example, Disk 0 in this PC was partitioned by Windows Setup into a system reserved partition, which doesn’t get a drive letter and second, larger boot and system partition that’s been assigned to drive C:.
Figure 11-2: Disk Management
Disk Management has been around since the earliest days of NT, so we won’t belabor its use here, but the important thing to note is that this is the first place you should look when you add a hard disk to your PC and it doesn’t show up in Explorer. From this interface, you can do such things as format a disk, activate a disk, assign a drive letter, partition a physical disk into separate logical disks, and shrink and expand existing partitions. If it relates to storage, Disk Management is the place to start.
The Most Basic Storage Spaces Configuration of Alclass="underline" One Disk, One Space, No Resiliency
The simplest possible Storage Spaces configuration involves just one (additional) disk, which you will use to create a single storage pool that can then be divided into one or more storage spaces; we’ll use one to keep things simple.
After you’ve added the disk and verified that it’s working in File Explorer, you need to access the Storage Spaces control panel, the Windows 8 user interface for managing this feature. As a classic Control Panel, Storage Spaces is well hidden, but you can find it easily enough by using Start Search (look under Settings, not Apps) or, if you’re more of a desktop kind of person, by using the power user menu or some other means to launch Control Panel and the search from there.
However you do it, Storage Spaces will resemble Figure 11-3 when launched the first time, regardless of how many additional disks are attached.
Figure 11-3: The Storage Spaces control panel
The new pool creation process is destructive, meaning that any data on a non-pooled (that is, normal) disk will be deleted as part of the process. You can think of this as formatting the pool, if that helps it make sense.
Click the link titled Create a new pool and storage space. After a User Account Control prompt—you don’t want the commoners mucking around with storage, now—you’ll be presented with the display shown in Figure 11-4. Here, Storage Spaces has found a single viable disk and is offering to let you use this device to create a new storage pool.
The Take offline link removes the drive letter from that storage device. You can do this to recover that drive letter, which you may wish to use for the space you’re about to create.
Figure 11-4: Creating a new storage pool with just one physical disk
To add the disk to a new pool, select it (by clicking the empty check box next to the disk) and then click Create pool. A new pool is created and then you are prompted to create a storage space that will exist in that pool. Unlike a pool, a storage space has a name, a drive letter assignment, and a resiliency type, and it can reserve more storage than is physically available. All of these capabilities are configured in this screen, which should resemble Figure 11-5.
Figure 11-5: After the pool is created, it’s time to create a space within that pool.
For a one-disk configuration, the choices are fairly limited: You can assign a name and drive letter of your choosing, but the only resiliency type you can use is “Simple (no resiliency),” which for some reason is not automatically selected. (The other options require two or more attached disks.)
So select “Simple (no resiliency)” from the Resiliency type drop-down and then click the Create storage space button. Storage Spaces creates your new storage space and returns to the main Storage Spaces’ control panel view, which will have changed, as shown in Figure 11-6, to include the details about your new storage pool and the single space it contains. (Additionally, a new Explorer window will open, showing the virtual partition that represents your new space.)
You can also expand the physical drives area to see the one-to-one representation between the actual drive and the space for which it is being used. Obviously, this capability gets more interesting—and useful—when you create a space with two or more physical disks.
Figure 11-6: One storage space with a single contained storage pool
Storage Pool Configuration Options
Once you have configured at least one storage pool, there are a few new options that present themselves. All of these are available from the main Storage Spaces control panel view, and all but the first three are found within the Storage pool area:
• Create a storage space: Every storage pool will contain at least one storage space. But once you have a storage pool, you can keep adding additional spaces as needed. To do so, click the link titled Create a storage space. You’ll see the same interface discussed in the previous section, and your options will be limited only by the available storage types attached to the PC.
• Add drives: If you’ve already created a pool and would like to add one or more drives to that pool, you do so through the Add drives link. Drives added in this fashion will automatically be made available to any spaces within the pool. (But note that Storage Spaces does not provide a way to change the resiliency or size configuration of a space after the fact, as is discussed a bit later in the chapter.)
• Rename pool: By default, a storage pool is silently given the imaginative name Storage pool by Windows. You can change this with the Rename pool link though, to be fair, this isn’t something you’ll need to deal with unless you’re creating multiple pools for some reason. That’s a fairly advanced configuration and, in our opinion, pretty crazy for even an advanced PC user.
• Create a new pool and storage space: This link on the left side of the Storage Spaces window will allow you to create other storage pools, and their contained spaces, assuming you have the additional disk capacity to support such a thing. Honestly, a single storage pool with multiple spaces is probably complex enough for most people. But if you have the urge to really overthink things, go nuts.