W10: Storage Space Problem after Windows Update

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

BestGear

Member
Aug 25, 2014
59
3
8
44
Hi

Firstly, I appreciate this is a server focussed section on the forum, but could not find a more appropriate place to post.

I have a Windows 10 box which has been offline for 6-8 months. It has two large storage spaces, both span 8 spindles and are formatted as REFS. No drives or space reconfiguration has been done in the last 2 years.

Switched it on yesterday and it started windows updates after a period.

On reboot, it failed to come up, however no apparent errors were present - it let me go into recovery options, login etc....

Today, I let it roll back the last Windows Updates..... and now I find one of my two storage spaces are set to RAW.

The second drive is perfect, thankfully.

Both storage spaces show no drive (physical) errors at all - showing the space and all drives as healthy and online. Get-virtualdisk shows spaces all healthy and operational status as ok.

I am "hoping" that somehow the failed space had been "upgraded" and now cannot be read by a downgraded OS? - is this feasible? Theory goes that it had not touched the second space, hence it remains ok.

What should my recovery approach be? I am treading very carefully here..... as you can imagine. Should I retry to get Windows update working and hope that is the root cause? I am aware that earlier W10 updates broke spaces, but understood that that defect was fixed a long time ago.

I do have backups of the failed space - however, that is on many DVD's and multiple hard drives so recovery would be a weeks work or even more.

Many thanks in advance for your time.

David
 
Last edited:

brokenwindupdoll

New Member
Apr 20, 2019
3
3
3
Definitely sounds like the ReFS version got upgraded. I had this happen when my old NAS wouldn't upgrade from one Windows version to the next, downgraded, but had already upgraded the ReFS volumes.

If that's the case, then the "easiest" way forward is to try to get Windows to update cleanly. Depending upon how far behind it might be, you might running into some weird interaction with cumulative updates on one version, and an enablement upgrade to the latest. If so, then manually installing MSU files from Microsoft Update Catalog is probably the way to go.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BestGear

BestGear

Member
Aug 25, 2014
59
3
8
44
Thanks both for your replies.

CyklonDX - great link - and one that I had not found...

Both - I think the REFS version will be the root cause.

The failed (RAW) volume is the old one - created yonks ago... so will be an early REFS version.

I have reinstalled Win10 with all updates on a fresh SSD and the volume is still RAW.... which does suggest REFS versions are the cause. I could not find any KB to uninstall however so plan B... I have just stuck a new boot SSD into the box to install 2012R2 which was what it originally was created with - in the hope that it appears in good health.... will update later once done.

I could not find any easy way to confirm the REFS or indeed storage space versions from the volumes, however, Windows10 does offer to update the space... obvs I have not made that move!

Will update the thread later.


David
 

BestGear

Member
Aug 25, 2014
59
3
8
44
Small update...

Installed the following... with no luck yet...all default installs no windows updates.

Windows Server 2012R2
Windows Server 2016

Currently trying Windows 10 1703, with no result... infact a weird result - all 8 drives are shown in Device Manager, however Disk Management does not see any of the 8 drives NOR a Storage Space volume.... weird. Windows Storage Space management tool does not see any Storage Spaces in existence.

Is what I am trying futile?!?!?!

Not sure where to go if 1703 does not restore the volume.... perhaps back up to 20H2 plus KB5003791 ?

Thanks Guys
 
Last edited:

oneplane

Well-Known Member
Jul 23, 2021
844
484
63
Get a linux bistro live usb disk and list the actual ID's of the records on disk. You can also use Paragon's ReFS driver to read additional (meta)data.
Microsoft's software saying 'raw' doesn't actually mean anything at all, ever. It's more like a blanket error saying 'dunno what to do, noot noot', which mean mean anything from a partition type not matching the contents, a version mismatch, a header mismatch (i.e. head and tail/backup not matching) or simply a bit error causing a checksum to not match.

As long as the drives are still good (have you checked SMART values?) the on-disk data shouldn't have changed.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: BestGear

brokenwindupdoll

New Member
Apr 20, 2019
3
3
3
I could not find any easy way to confirm the REFS or indeed storage space versions from the volumes, however, Windows10 does offer to update the space... obvs I have not made that move!
Annoyingly, getting the version info is a bit of a pain. Storage Spaces just lists the server "version" as a string:
Code:
Get-StoragePool | fl FriendlyName,Version
ReFS is nicer about giving you a real number:
Code:
fsutil fsinfo refsinfo [drive letter]
As for if what you're doing is futile, it might be. onplane is correct in that when Windows sees a partition that isn't fully correct, it just slaps RAW on it and stops touching it. Thus, if you have enough storage elsewhere, their suggestion to use a Linux bootdisk to try to copy data off is a good one.

Another option is refsutil that ships in fairly current Windows versions. It has a lot of modes, and most of them will modify the contents of the disk (so you can easily make things worse). However, 'salvage' is the same idea as above, where you try to copy data off onto another disk. If it's just the partition info being screwy and you know the exact ReFS version and allocation unit size, 'fixboot' could help; but, since it modifies the on-disk data, you could be making any recovery operation that much harder.

Good luck!
 

BestGear

Member
Aug 25, 2014
59
3
8
44
Thank you oneplane and brokenwindupdoll for your thoughts.

The linux route sounds like a possibility although my linux skills are limited... but not zero.

What I had hoped for, was to revert to earlier windows/server versions to see what we see...given it was a windows update to 20h2 that screwed things, I have hoped that going back to a earlier windows version that still had support for both storage spaces AND also the REFS version that the drive was formatted to, would mean I get the volume back... this now however seems unlikely as I am nearly at the end my my windows ISO stash to try!

I will look at the Paragon REFS driver and see what I can glean within that route.

It is just so annoying that the "space" always reports good health, as do all spindles (8 of them, zero SMART errors) - and its just REFS that is causing the issue (or so it appears). The wiki for REFS was an interesting read - I had never seen such a good reference of the 12 versions of REFS that have been released.

I am not sure how long I will continue with this - however, when the gut feel says the data integrity is fine, it must be possible to recover.

I started looking at third party tools. Two thoughts here - One - can be bl**dy expensive for a home user! Two - I dont want to recover the files if it means I need to start renaming them all after the tool fails to pull the original file name (just gives a numeric filename wit no idea of content other tat extension - which I have seen in other situations previously). I do understand that they are recovery tools rather than repair - a tool tat preserved filenames and just permitted copying to other storage would be great (preserving path too please!).

I am going to walk through each Windows version that is listed against REFS version in the WIKI and see what happens....

David
 

BestGear

Member
Aug 25, 2014
59
3
8
44
Just FYI as I progress..

Back trying Windows 10 1703 and 1803 - all 8 drives were shown in Device Manager, however Disk Management does not see any of the 8 drives NOR a Storage Space volume.... this is the same in 1709 too - is that a clue towards the REFS version...?

Pop Quiz - Do you think having the storage space drives online AT THE TIME OF windows installation would affect my outcomes in testing?

I have been removing the drives, installing the OS then shutdown, insert drives back in, and boot - Ifear that the pool not being present at boot time may have affected the process (thinking being some later versions of OS will support an existing early REFS version but not allow creation etc).

David
 
Last edited:

oneplane

Well-Known Member
Jul 23, 2021
844
484
63
I would think that just like Dynamic volumes it would always detect them, just not always 'online' them. But if they don't show up at all (including in the fs utilities) and are just 'disks' in diskpart/diskmgmt.msc it would probably mean the version used couldn't detect them. Maybe the event viewer can show events for spaces/refs.

Also, have you considered moving everything to ZFS on a NAS yet? :p
 
  • Like
Reactions: BestGear

BestGear

Member
Aug 25, 2014
59
3
8
44
Hi Oneplane... I liked your NAS plug... he he... I have two QNAPs here - cant remember the models one 8 drive and one 16 drive chassis... I have had a play with ZFS... cant remember why I diverted back to Windows to be honest!. This box I am working on is my Plex server (two 8 drive storage spaces arrays) and I wanted it all local. My biggest mistake it seems is using REFS....

The FS utilities did not detect them in the three versions mentioned... however the drives are there as devices.

Weird that they are not in "Disk Management" - with these versions... the volume does appear in later Windows versions.. but I am now working my way forward through ALL Windows 10 releases to see if I get lucky! (God bless Rufus's ability to download ISOs of any version you want!).
 
Last edited:

acquacow

Well-Known Member
Feb 15, 2017
784
439
63
42
I've found that if Disk Management can't properly read partition info off of a drive, it just won't show it sometimes. Diskpart will show it, but not the Disk Manager app.

Sorry about your troubles with ReFS. I haven't had a windows update take it out, but I did take a passed-through LSI card from a windows VM and put my ReFS volume in a physical windows 10 box and lost all my data. I figured the other win 10 OS would detect the disk signatures/etc and re-assemble the ReFS volume, but it couldn't sort it out.

There's definitely some unique attributes to ReFS that don't seem to port from place to place. I worry that a controller firmware update/etc could take it out if it's this sensitive...
 

Bruno Carvalho

New Member
Mar 12, 2020
4
0
1
Sorry man, I see this topic today only.
You solved your problem? I'm ask because I have a ISO in pt-br (yes, I'm from Brazil) before codes **** assigned... I'm talking to MSDN 2015 ISO on my backups.