Creating a storage pool

Creating a storage pool

Storage pools allow you to pool available space on disks so that units of storage (virtual disks) can be allocated from this pool. To create a storage pool, you must have at least one unused disk and a storage subsystem to manage it. This storage subsystem can be the one included with the Storage Spaces feature or a subsystem associated with attached storage.

When a computer has extra hard drives in addition to the hard drive on which Windows is installed, you can allocate one or more of the additional drives to a storage pool. However, keep in mind that if you use a formatted drive with a storage pool, Windows permanently deletes all the files on that drive. Additionally, it’s important to point out that physical disks with the MBR partition style are converted automatically to the GPT partition style when you add them to a storage pool and create volumes on them.
Each physical disk allocated to the pool can be handled in one of three ways:

As a data store that is available for use
As a data store that can be manually allocated for use
As a hot spare in case a disk in the pool fails or is removed from the subsystem