How to create parity volume with Storage Spaces on Windows 11

On Windows 11, Storage Spaces is a feature designed to group drives to create a virtual drive with a larger capacity with different protection levels with the ability to extend the size by adding more drives.

Storage Spaces offers five types of resiliency options, including “simple” (no resiliency), “two-way mirror,” “three-way mirror,” “parity,” and “dual parity.”

This guide will help you to use Storage Spaces to create and manage a parity volume, which, similar to a RAID 5 level, requires at least three drives. It provides storage efficiency and protection against one drive failure by copying data in multiple places. If a drive fails, you can replace it, and the data will regenerate using the parity information available on the remaining drives. This option is more suited to store long-term data (like backups) since it offers the most storage capacity when combining storage with protection, but performance is not ideal for files you use every day.

This guide will teach you the steps to create a parity space using the modern Storage Spaces experience on Windows 11.

Create parity volume from Storage Spaces on Windows 11
Manage parity volume from Storage Spaces on Windows 11

Create parity volume from Storage Spaces on Windows 11

To create a parity space with Storage Spaces on Windows 11, use these steps:

Open Settings on Windows 11.
Click on System.
Click on Storage.
Under the “Storage management” section, click the “Advanced storage settings” option.
Choose the Storage Spaces setting.
Click the Add button for the “Add a new Storage Pool” setting.
Confirm a name for the storage pool.
Select at least three drives to create a pool with parity on Windows 11.
Click the Create button.
Confirm a name for the storage space.
Specify the size of the space.

Quick tip: If you want to dedicate all the available capacity to the storage space, you can leave the default size. You can also make the storage larger, and when running low on space, you can add more drives to extend the storage.
Select the Parity option for resiliency.
Click the Create button.
Specify a label for the drive.
Specify a letter for the drive.
Select the NTFS option for the file system.

Quick tip: You can also access the Advanced settings to mount the drive as a folder, specify the allocation unit size, and enable compression.
Click the Format button.

Once you complete the steps, the new drive will appear in File Explorer. If a drive fails, the storage and data will be available, but you will need to replace the hard drive in question, as a second drive failure will cause data loss.

Manage parity volume from Storage Spaces on Windows 10

In addition to creating a pool and parity space, you can also manage many other aspects of Storage Spaces from the Settings app. You can extend, take it offline, delete, rename spaces, and destroy pools.

Extend parity storage space

To extend a parity space on Windows 11, use these steps:

Open Settings.
Click on System.
Click on Storage.
Under the “Storage management” section, click the “Advanced storage settings” option.
Choose the Storage Spaces setting.
Click the storage pool on the right side.
Select the “Physical disks” section, and click the Add disks button.
Select the new drives to add to the pool.
Check the “Optimize disk usage” option (if applicable).
Click the Add button.
Select the “Storage Spaces” section, choose the storage space to extend, and click the Properties button.
Under the “Size” section, click the Extend button.
Confirm the new logical storage capacity.

Quick tip: If you added a new drive and want to extend the space by the amount of space of the new drive, specify that amount by looking at the “Storage pool capacity (Storage pool)” information. You can always prevision and make the size larger than the physical storage. Then when storage runs out of space, you will need to add another drive.
Check the Extend volume to match the new size option.
Click the OK button.

After you complete the steps, the space and volume will extend to the size you specified. If you are using a capacity number larger than the physical space available, as soon as the storage begins to run out of space, you will need to add another drive to make the remaining space available.

Take parity space offline or online

To take offline or bring a space online on Windows 11, use these steps:

Open Settings.
Click on System.
Click on Storage.
Under the “Storage management” section, click the “Advanced storage settings” option.
Choose the Storage Spaces setting.
Click the storage pool on the right side.
Under the “Storage Spaces” section, select the storage space to take offline or online and click the Properties button.
Under the “Status” section, click the “Take offline” button to take the space offline on Windows 11.
Click the “Bring online” button to bring the space online.

Once you complete the steps, the space and volume will go offline or online, depending on the action.

Delete parity storage space

To delete a parity space, use these steps:

Open Settings.
Click on System.
Click on Storage.
Under the “Storage management” section, click the “Advanced storage settings” option.
Choose the Storage Spaces setting.
Click the storage pool on the right side.
Under the “Storage Spaces” section, select the storage space to delete and click the Properties button.
Under the “Delete” section, click the Delete button.
Click the Delete Space button.

After you complete the steps, the parity storage will be erased from the pool and any data previously stored in this storage space.

Rename parity storage space

To rename the parity space, use these steps:

Open Settings.
Click on System.
Click on Storage.
Under the “Storage management” section, click the “Advanced storage settings” option.
Click the Storage Spaces button.
Click the storage pool on the right side.
Under the “Storage Spaces” section, select the storage space to rename and click the Properties button.
Click the Rename option.
Confirm the new name for the space.
Click the OK button.

Once you complete the steps, the storage space will reflect the new name you specified.

Delete storage pool

To delete the storage pool, you need to delete the spaces and remove the drives from the pool using these steps:

Open Settings.
Click on System.
Click on Storage.
Under the “Storage management” section, click the “Advanced storage settings” option.
Click the Storage Spaces button.
Click the storage pool on the right side.
Under the “Storage Spaces” section, select the storage space to delete and click the Properties button.
Under the “Delete” section, click the Delete button.
Click the Delete Space button.
On the storage pool page, under the “Physical disks” section, select a drive participating in the pool.
Click the Properties button.
Click the “Prepare for removal” button.
Click the Remove button.

Quick tip: If you want to undo the change, click the Unretire button.
Repeat steps 8 through 11 to remove all the drives from the pool.

Once you complete the steps, the pool will be automatically deleted from the drives. Now, you can remove the drives from the system, or you can create another pool.