Storage Spaces not releasing free space

[dalekphalm]

I have a Home Media/File Server running Windows Server Essentials 2012. I'm using Storage Spaces as my network share: Currently just 2x 3TB HDD's with no resiliency - Anything important is backed up to an external 1TB HDD.

When I first setup the shares using the Dashboard, I created a share called "Video". I then proceeded to copy all my video content on here (About 2.5TB or so).

Then I realized that media sharing wasn't turned on (Not really needed, but you never know when it'll be useful), so I activated that.

The dashboard then proceeded to add a new share called "Videos" automatically. So I used the "Move" command to copy all data from the "Video" share to the "Videos" share. This was done via my main desktop with the 2 shares open in separate Windows Explorer windows.

After this was finished, Windows Explorer, and the dashboard, both showed the proper "space used" and "free space" figures, HOWEVER, Storage Spaces shows double what is actually used. It appears that Storage Spaces did not "forget" about the deleted files (One HDD shows 100% full, the other HDD shows 86.5% full).

I have tried using the "Defragment and Optimize Drives" tool in the server manager, which is SUPPOSED to release any free space from large file deletions, but this did nothing.

I also tried this with the registry edit:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem: DisableDeleteNotification=1 (default is 0) as per the ONLY search results I can find on the topic.

Does anyone know of a way to fix this issue? What will happen when Storage Spaces reaches 100%, yet Explorer still shows plenty of space? I'd rather not have to recreate the Storage Spaces.

 

[nickveldrin]

Ok, so i registered an account to try to reply and ended up losing all that i typed after i tried to submit it and log on for the first time. So frustrating.

Please take a look at this page and that series on storage spaces to learn a little more on how it works and what is happening on the back end:

http://bariseris.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/windows-server-2012-storage-spaces-and-data-deduplication-hands-on-review-part-5/

Basically i think you will just need to run:
Optimize-Volume h -ReTrim -SlabConsolidate -Verbose

..and that should be it.

 

[nickveldrin]

Also to answer your second question, if you have a thin provisioned volume and you exceed the space available, i think what i recall reading was that the drive in your array that gets filled up will go offline. But i cannot recall if that also meant that your volume would also go offline - sorry.

This is all such new technology and there isnt a lot of support or information out there compared to traditional raid, vendor raid cards, or larger vendor solutions from emc, netapp, etc.

 

[matt_payne666]

for the second question, yes the Virtual Disk will just go offline with no warning, the volume will still be mounted so its just a case of using disk management or server manager, bringing the disk back online and freeing some space

 

[gjs278]

if you thin provision, you have to trim to get the space back