Other problems you might experience with storage spaces relate to drive failures and a loss of resiliency. When a storage space uses two-way mirroring, three-way mirroring, parity, or dual parity, you can recover resiliency by reconnecting a disconnected drive or replacing a failed drive. When a storage space uses a simple volume and drives were disconnected, you can recover the volume by reconnecting the drives.
Selecting the notification icon for Action Center displays the related notifications. If there is a problem with storage spaces, Action Center updates the related notification panel in the desktop notification area with a message stating “Check Storage Spaces for issues.” To open Server Manager, select the notification icon, and then select the link provided. In Server Manager, you’ll need to select the File And Storage Services node, and then select Storage Pools to get the relevant error and warning icons.
To view errors and warnings for storage pools, press and hold or right-click the storage pool with the error or warning icon, and then select Properties. In the Properties dialog box, select Health in the left pane to display the health status and operational status in the main pane. For example, you might find that the health status is listed as Warning and the operation status is listed as Degraded. Degraded is a status you’ll get when there is a loss of redundancy.
To view errors and warnings for virtual disks and their associated physical disks, press and hold or right-click the virtual disk with the error or warning icon, and then select Properties. In the Properties dialog box, select Health in the left pane to display the health status and operational status in the main pane. Note the storage layout and the physical disks in use as well. If there is a problem with a physical disk, such as a loss of communication, this status will be displayed. You’ll get a Loss of Communication status when a physical disk is missing, failed, or disconnected.
When storage spaces use external drives, a missing drive might be a common problem you encounter. In this case, users can continue to work, and redundancy will be restored when you reconnect the drive. However, if a drive failed, you’d need to complete the following steps to restore redundancy:
1. Physically remove the failed drive. If the drive is connected internally, you’ll need to shut down and unplug the computer before you can remove the drive; otherwise, simply disconnect an externally connected drive.
2. Physically add or connect a replacement drive. Next, add the drive to the storage space by doing the following:
a. On the Storage Spaces panel, press and hold or right-click the storage space you want to configure, and then select Add Physical Drive.
b. In the Add Physical Disk dialog box, select the drive that should be allocated to the storage pool.
c. When you click OK, Windows Server will prepare the drive and allocate it to the storage pool.
3. At this point, the failed drive should be listed as “Retired.” Remove the failed drive from the storage space by selecting the related Remove Disk option, and then confirm that you want to remove the drive by selecting Yes when prompted.
Windows Server restores redundancy by copying data as necessary to the new disk. During this process, the status of the storage space ordinarily is listed as “Repairing.” A value depicting how much of the repair task is completed is also shown. When this value reaches 100 percent, the repair is complete.
Managing existing partitions and drives
Disk Management provides many features to manage existing partitions and drives. Use these features to assign drive letters, delete partitions, set the active partition, and more. In addition, Windows Server 2012 R2 provides other utilities to carry out common tasks such as converting a volume to NTFS, checking a drive for errors, and cleaning up unused disk space.
NOTE Windows Vista and all later releases of Windows support hot-pluggable media that use NTFS volumes. This new feature enables you to format USB flash devices and other similar media with NTFS. There are also enhancements to prevent data loss when ejecting NTFS-formatted removable media.
Assigning drive letters and paths
You can assign drives one drive letter and one or more drive paths, provided that the drive paths are mounted on NTFS drives. Drives don’t have to be assigned a drive letter or path. A drive with no designators is considered to be unmounted, and you can mount it by assigning a drive letter or path at a later date. You need to unmount a drive before moving it to another computer.
Windows cannot modify the drive letter of system, boot, or page-file volumes. To change the drive letter of a system or boot volume, you need to edit the registry as described in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 223188 (support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/ ). Before you can change the drive letter of a page-file volume, you might need to move the page file to a different volume.
To manage drive letters and paths, press and hold or right-click the drive you want to configure in Disk Management, and then tap or click Change Drive Letter And Paths to open the dialog box (shown in Figure 2–8). You can now do the following:
■ Add a drive path Tap or click Add, select Mount In The Following Empty NTFS Folder, and then type the path to an existing folder, or tap or click Browse to search for or create a folder.
■ Remove a drive path Select the drive path to remove, tap or click Remove, and then tap or click Yes.
■ Assign a drive letter Tap or click Add, select Assign The Following Drive Letter, and then choose an available letter to assign to the drive.
■ Change the drive letter Select the current drive letter, and then tap or click Change. Select Assign The Following Drive Letter, and then choose a different letter to assign to the drive.
■ Remove a drive letter Select the current drive letter, tap or click Remove, and then tap or click Yes.
NOTE If you try to change the letter of a drive that’s in use, Windows Server 2012 R2 displays a warning. You need to exit programs that are using the drive and try again, or allow Disk Management to force the change by tapping or clicking Yes when prompted.
FIGURE 2–8 You can change the drive letter and path assignment in the Change Drive Letter And Paths dialog box.
Changing or deleting the volume label
The volume label is a text descriptor for a drive. With FAT, the volume label can be up to 11 characters and can include spaces. With NTFS, the volume label can be up to 32 characters. Additionally, although FAT doesn’t allow you to use some special characters — including * / \ []:; | =, + “? ‹ › — NTFS does allow you to use these special characters.
Because the volume label is displayed when the drive is accessed in various Windows Server 2012 R2 utilities, including File Explorer, it can provide information about a drive’s contents. You can change or delete a volume label by using Disk Management or File Explorer.
Using Disk Management, you can change or delete a label by following these steps:
1. Press and hold or right-click the partition, and then tap or click Properties.