Windows 10 Storage Spaces issue confirmed by Microsoft

By Sean Endicott
published

Windows 10 version 2004 has an issue that prevents some PCs from accessing Storage Spaces.

Surface Go 2
Surface Go 2 (Image credit: Daniel Rubino / Windows Central)

What you need to know

  • Microsoft confirmed an issue with Storage Spaces on PCs running the Windows 10 May 2020 Update.
  • The issue causes some PCs to not be able to access Storage Spaces.
  • There is currently no fix, but you can mark Storage Spaces as read only.

Microsoft recently confirmed (opens in new tab) an issue affecting some PCs running the Windows 10 May 2020 Update. The update causes some PCs to not be ableto access Storage Spaces. Additionally, some configurations cause a partition of Storage Spaces to show RAW in Disk Manager. Right now, there isn't a fix for the issue, but Microsoft is investigating it.

The issue was first spotted by Windows Latest and we reported on the issue earlier this week alongside several other problems with the Windows 10 May 2020 Update.

Microsoft does not specify how many PCs are affected by this issue. It does, however, specify that there is no workaround for the issue right now. Instead, you can mark Storage Spaces as read only. Here are the steps to do so, as outlined by Microsoft.

  1. Select Start and type: powershell
  2. Right click or long press on Windows PowerShell and select Run as administrator.
  3. If prompted by a User Access Control dialog for Windows Powershell, select yes.
  4. Within the PowerShell dialog, type the following command and press enter: get-virtualdisk | ? WriteCacheSize -gt 0 | get-disk | set-disk -IsReadOnly $true
  5. Your Storage Spaces should now be set to read only, meaning you will not be able to write to them. Your device will still be usable, and any volume not seen as RAW should be readable.

Microsoft notes that it does not recommend running the chkdsk command on any device affected by this issue.

Sean Endicott
Sean Endicott
News Writer and apps editor

Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com (opens in new tab).

9 Comments
  • Err... what are "Storage Spaces"?
  • Apperently a RAID alternative (WC should have described that better I think, it seems exotic), from MS site: "Storage Spaces is a technology in Windows and Windows Server that can help protect your data from drive failures. It is conceptually similar to RAID, implemented in software. You can use Storage Spaces to group three or more drives together into a storage pool and then use capacity from that pool to create Storage Spaces. "
  • Perhaps next 3 updates need to focus on zero features and only refinement, they are losing thier way. Doesnt look much better at Apple either.. https://www.imore.com/macos-1016-wishlist
  • Could be wrong but it seems this issue will effect only a tiny percentage of Windows users. Anyway just wait a month till installing big feature updates and w10 is stable.
  • I use storage spaces to mirror a couple of HDDs for data protection reasons. I have not had any issues yet
  • Well, anyone who trusts a "software RAID" for critical data is a fool anyway.
    Storage Spaces is essentially MS version of JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) as a way to pool them into a single "storage object".
    It is even worse that MS included this (and promoted it) in a "Consumer" product.
    RAID (especially software-raid) is not something to be used lightly, and with MS history of $%#@-ups lately, I would never, EVER trust something that is not even deemed important to their developers.
    Their Q&A has seemed to have completely disappeared, with the public being used as both Alpha (Fast Ring) and Beta (RTM) testers lately.
    MS has gotten almost as bad as Google when it comes to arbitrarily dropping/ignoring/deprecating "features" from their software without even notifying anyone, and this is no exception.
    Even though I have W10 v2004 on all my PCs at home, I'm not happy with the quality of it.
    It should have NEVER been released to the public in this condition.
  • Yes, RAID (in any form) is NOT a backup solution. It is not a substitute for proper backup methodology for protecting your files.
  • problem fixed here : https://youtu.be/p-4K0JO133U
  • Hmm.... where's my mallet? Maybe I can use it to force install FreeBSD on to Windows for decent raid support 😶. Joking aside, at least this time it's a niche sample size of Windows users as anyone using/running a proper raid setup will not be using Windows lol.