I need Windows Storage Spaces help.

ryandikdan · October 3, 2022

Hey everyone, I'm kinda boned. I made a RAID5 array (Parity array) with Storage Spaces in Windows (Five 2Tb drives to get about 7Tb of usable storage space). Now, everything with it was working fine, but then I had the idea putting the drives in their own little case with a fan, instead of duct taped in the back of my case. I found some good cables and stuff and was really proud of myself. THEN, when I booted it up, the BIOS took ages to load up (if it did). And when it did I could sometimes access the drive. Other times it would say that one or more of the drives are inaccessible. I emailed a bit with ASRock, and they were telling me that it could be due to WHICH SATA PORTS the drives were connected to, which was a kick in the gnads (nads?), since I have no clue how they were originally hooked up. They also said that switching the ports find the right combination would make it worse and worse as the computer tries to use those drives to 'rebuild' the original drive. I had a good bit of important data on those drives. Is there anyone with an expertise in this rather niche Windows software that can help me? Is it too late? Is there a way to find the right ports? Can I find out what works by plugging them in while Windows has already booted? I appreciate all help. Thank you.

ryandikdan · December 27, 2022

To anyone in the future having this problem. My actual issue was that I was powering all 5 drives off of one molex power cord from my power supply. While this isn't an issue for the power supply (since mine can easily support the wattage of these HDDs), each cable coming out has a limit. So if you hear your HDDs spinning up and then turning off, it could be a power issue like it was for me. Also, the SATA ports don't matter for Windows Storage Spaces.

I ended up messing with it and tried adding a drive, which I then needed to purchase the Reclaime software to recover my original files (software worked great, worth $80). In the end, make sure your drives are adequately powered and make sure to check the easy stuff before messing with the array itself!