Microsoft Storage Spaces for Desktop Benchmarked

After NAS mirror upgrade I ended up with two spare Barracuda 7200.14 hard drives.  Given that I am running out of space on my video editing workstation, the choice was clear.  Would be nice though if I could use those in a mirror - to make sure things are fast and tolerate hard drive failure.  I just learned about Microsoft Storage Spaces and throught I would give it and ReFS a try.

I compared I/O performance of three drives:

• Kingston SSDNow V300 Series SV300S37A/120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III SSD - just because it was already there.
• Single hard drive - 2861589GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 (AF) ST3000DM001-1E6166 
• A Microsoft Windows 8.1 Storage Space with two of the above hard drives configured as mirror.

Here is what I measured using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64:

	MB/s	IOPS	MB/s	IOPS	MB/s	IOPS	Delta
Sequential Read:	446.836		140.259		181.808		22.85%
Sequential Write:	144.154		137.572		125.443		-8.82%
Random Read 512KB:	404.102		50.204		39.758		-20.81%
Random Write 512KB:	144.021		82.208		66.927		-18.59%
Random Read 4KB (QD=1):	22.666	5533.8	0.386	94.3	0.449	109.6	14.03%
Random Write 4KB (QD=1):	108.644	26524.5	6.93	1692	0.382	93.2	-94.49%
Random Read 4KB (QD=32):	116.621	28471.9	0.468	114.3	0.456	111.2	-2.56%
Random Write 4KB (QD=32):	141.824	34624.9	0.983	239.9	0.384	93.7	-60.94%
	SSD		1x Barracuda 7200.14		2x Barracuda 7200.14

Transition to storage spaces mirror moderately improves sequential read speed.  Random write performance however is dramatically deteriorated.  For a workstation use scenario this makes storage spaces unacceptable for me.  They may still be relevant for servers.

So I will be sticking with two single hard drives.  Maybe will use synchtoy to backup one drive to another.

Mirror Upgrade - Step by Step, the Right Way

The last time I tried to upgrade the mirror I messed up.  I ended up with the following:

Disk	Size (MB)	Description	Device model	Virtual device	Pool
da0	1907730	Seagate Barracuda Green (AF)	ST2000DL003-9VT166	tank_mirror_0	tank
da1	1907730	Seagate Barracuda Green (AF)	ST2000DL003-9VT166
da2	2861589	Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 (AF)	ST3000DM001-1E6166	vault_mirror_1	vault
da3	2861589	Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 (AF)	ST3000DM001-1E6166
da4	3815448	Seagate NAS HD	ST4000VN000-1H4168	vault_disk_2
da5	3815448	WD Red	WDC WD40EFRX-68WT0N0	VeryTemp	VeryTemp

da4 ended up being added in serial not in parallel fashion.  I then added da5 and copied the content of the pool vault to it.  I am about to add another drive in parallel with da5 (thus making VeryTemp a mirror) and remove da2, da3 and da4.