Storage Spaces

When I first read about Storage Spaces in the Windows 8 blog, I was enthusiastic. Finally a replacement for the drive extender technology Microsoft let die so cruelly. Having used Storage Spaces for several weeks now, I am not so sure any more.

Did I mention I love the new Task Manager in Windows 8? It is brilliantly designed, conveying tons of meaningful information while looking very good. This article is not about Task Manager, though, but about Windows 8 - its Storage Spaces functionality, to be exact. But I will be using Task Manager to analyze the performance of Storage Spaces. And with that, we are back where we started.

The introduction of a new file system is a big step even for Microsoft. According to this article in the Building Windows 8 blog ReFS will ship with the server version of Windows 8 only, but will be brought to the client at a later time, too. ReFS was built for resiliency and complements Storage Spaces. This post summarizes the main facts from the announcement.