Can I Speed Up Our Windows Storage Spaces Recovery?Can I Speed Up Our Windows Storage Spaces Recovery?

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Dear [Root] Access,

We’ve been using Windows Storage Spaces for data redundancy. Last week, one of the drives in the pool failed. After replacing the drive, the rebuild process took an extremely long time and slowed down the system. 

Is there a faster way to recover from drive failures in Storage Spaces, or should I consider alternative redundancy options?

—Dissatisfied with Storage Spaces

Dear Dissatisfied with Storage Spaces,

As you pointed out, Storage Spaces can be slow when rebuilding a failed volume. Here are several recommendations for expediting the process.

Avoid Heavy Workloads

Minimize or completely avoid I/O-intensive workloads during the rebuild. It will free up more IOPS (input/output operations per second), speeding up the process. 

Use Smaller Disks

After recovering from the disk failure, consider making architectural changes to your Storage Spaces setup. Your storage architecture greatly impacts the time it takes to rebuild an array.

My first recommendation for modifying your storage architecture is to use a larger number of smaller disks instead of a few large ones. Smaller disks have notable advantages:

Related:Executing a Zero-Downtime Storage Hardware Refresh

Enable Write-Back Caching

I also recommend enabling write-back caching if your hardware supports it. Write-back caching writes data to memory before committing it to disk, which can sometimes reduce the time needed to rebuild an array. However, if you enable write-back caching, make sure to protect your storage hardware against power failures with a battery backup. Otherwise, you could lose cached data could during outages. 

It is worth noting that some newer storage hardware uses NVMe storage for write-back caching. Unlike RAM, NVMe storage is non-volatile, meaning it retains data even during power loss.

Implement Disk Mirroring

Another way to reduce rebuild time is to use disk mirroring, either in addition to or instead of parity. In parity arrays (like RAID 5 or RAID 6), the system must calculate parity data during the rebuild, which can be time-consuming. It can take days to rebuild a parity array. Mirroring eliminates the need to calculate parity data, allowing for a faster rebuild.

Related:Tracking Down Lost Disk Space: A PowerShell Solution

Employ Hot Spares

My last suggestion is to designate a couple of drives in your physical storage array as hot spares. If a disk fails, the system can immediately provision a hot spare to replace it and start the rebuild process automatically. It allows the rebuild to begin before anyone even notices the failure, reducing the wait time for the process to complete.

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