Microsoft has finally offered an official fix for Windows 10 version 2004 users who find that the Storage Spaces disk failure protection feature breaks after upgrade and corrupts some files.
As ZDNet reported in mid-June, some users reported seeing corrupt partitions and corrupted files in Storage Spaces’ ‘parity spaces’ feature for efficient storage archiving.
According to Microsoft, parity spaces they are “designed for storage efficiency and protect your files from drive failure by keeping multiple copies.” It is optimal for file data and streaming media such as music and videos.
One user detailed potentially costly issues caused by Windows 10 2004 update and errors in storage spaces.
“My 20TB parity storage space now shows up as RAW, no files are accessible. The Storage Spaces tool and PowerShell show it as healthy, containing data. The ReFS partition appears to be corrupted, and it is possible that have to shell out cash in recovery software and some external drives to copy files so you can rebuild, “wrote one user.
“I started noticing the corrupt photos I keep in my parity storage space in the last week. However, there are no errors in chkdsk.”
Microsoft has released a ‘hardware and device troubleshooter’ and a ‘storage space troubleshooter’, but cautions that there is no complete mitigation for all scenarios of this issue.
Troubleshooting hardware and devices “will prevent problems with the data in your storage spaces. After the troubleshooter has run, you will not be able to write to your storage spaces.” Automatically change system settings to mitigate the problem.
Storage space troubleshooter mitigates the problem for some users and restores read and write access to parity storage spaces. It is for the scenario where data corruption has been detected in a parity storage space.
“This troubleshooter takes steps to prevent further corruption. It also restores write access if the space was previously marked read-only,” says Microsoft.
The troubleshooters have only been released to some machines running Windows 10 version 2004. For IT professionals, Microsoft has also provided instructions for manually implementing a hardware and device troubleshooter equivalent solution with Windows PowerShell. It does not have a manual method for the Storage Spaces troubleshooter.
Microsoft has also provided instructions for using WinFR to recover files.
Separately, Microsoft released a troubleshooter for an issue affecting OneDrive after installing Windows 10 version 2004.
“Some older devices or devices with certain older applications installed that use legacy file system filter drivers may not be able to connect to OneDrive through the OneDrive application,” explains Microsoft.
“Affected devices may not be able to download new files on demand or open previously synced / downloaded files.”
