Windows 8 Hacks

Chapter 10. Hardware

What’s the whole purpose of an operating system like Windows 8? To run hardware. That’s where this chapter comes in. Windows 8 offers plenty of hidden and surprising features to help you get more out of your hardware; for example, for managing hard disk space, using multiple monitors, or getting more juice out of your tablet or laptop. You’ll find all that and more in this chapter.

Hack #109. To Infinity and Beyond with Windows 8 Storage Spaces

Running out of disk space? Who isn’t? Windows 8 lets you add multiple types of storage and treats it as one giant hard disk, even though the storage is on different disks.

No matter how much storage space you have, it’s never enough. Music collections, downloaded movies and TV shows, photographs…today’s PCs suck up hard disk space at an alarming rate.

Windows 8 solves the problem neatly. You can add many different types of storage and mix and match them, including external USB disks, installed hard disks, and more, and make them look like one giant storage pool. To get more disk space, just add another storage source to the pool. No need to rip out an old disk, figure out how to get data from the old disk to a larger one, and then install the new disk.

The feature that solves all that is new in Windows 8, and it’s called Storage Spaces. It gives you remarkable capabilities, and yet is surprisingly easy to use.

Note

Note: Some types of drives won’t work with Storage Spaces. For example, I haven’t found a USB flash drive that ...