With the Windows Storage Spaces tool, you can pair your hard drives together to consolidate data and add redundancies to all your drives. Here’s how to get started.
I have built up a rather large collection of movies and TV shows that I’ve ripped from Blu-ray discs. Every few years, I find I need a bigger hard drive to hold them all, and with the introduction of 4K Blu-ray, even my multi-terabyte drive is bursting at the seams. If only there was a better way to organize and consolidate all these files. This is where Windows’ Storage Spaces comes in.How Storage Spaces Work
If you use multiple drives to organize all your files, Storage Spaces can combine them into a pool that Windows sees as one unified volume—with one drive letter. This is a helpful alternative to having all your data spread across multiple internal and external storage locations in a disorganized fashion.
Storage Spaces also allows you to add redundancy: If one drive fails, you can pop in a new one and rebuild your storage space without losing any data. (This can be similar to a backup, but it’s not a replacement for one, so you should still have a remote, versioned backup in addition to redundancy if your data is truly important.)
If you’ve heard of RAID, Storage Spaces is similar, only it’s performed entirely in software—no need for an extra RAID controller card. The performance of your storage space won’t be as fast as it would be with a RAID card, but it’s significantly cheaper and easier to implement when you’re just getting started with these types of pooling technologies.How to Create a Pooled Storage Space
To create a storage space in Windows 10 or Windows 11, open the Start menu, type « storage spaces, » and choose Manage Storage Spaces to open Control Panel.
