I have a storage pool with multiple parity and mirror volumes set up and populated with data. All are thin provisioned.

When I try to optimize a volume the process seems to get stuck at Slab Analysis:

PS C:\Windows\system32> Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter o -ReTrim -SlabConsolidate -Verbose
VERBOSE: Invoking slab consolidation on misc (O:)...
VERBOSE: Slab Analysis:  0% complete...

CPU is idling, there is close to zero disk access. After 28 hours there has been no visible progress. The volume has 29 GB of data, uses 49.5 GB of pool capacity, so it's not huge by any standard.

Obviously something is not working right. Event viewer shows nothing out of the ordinary, as far as I can tell. OS edition is WS 2012 Essentials but I posted here as it seems not to be an Essentials-specific issue.

Any suggestions on how to further analyze this problem are welcome.

-Lars

EDIT: File system in use is ReFS - not sure if it matters in this context.

• Edited by LarsV Sunday, February 03, 2013 1:13 AM

Bumping, as this is still a problem.

I reinstalled the guest OS (WS2012 Essentials), problem remains.

I upgraded the host OS from WS 2008R2 to WS 2012. This led to that it was no longer possible to mount the physical drives to the guest OS. So I set up the host OS to manage the storage spaces and then mount the virtual disks to the guest OS. Problem with Optimize-volume remains.

I need tips on how to analyze this problem, alternatively to file a problem report. After eight days, optimize-volume still does not complete, and there is no sign of activity.

Bumping again.

Storage volumes tend to grow as they are used, without any consolidation of slab usage physical disk space will eventually get exhausted. This has already happened, the solution is to copy all data to external storage and recreate volumes. As far as I can tell, I will have to do this every 3-4 weeks.

Please someone look into this issue.

That doesn't sounds so good. So Optimize-Volume D -ReTrim -SlabConsolidate -Verbose doesn't help, but it finishes at my Installation.

But that has to be a bug, it couldn't a solution to Transfer several TB from Storage Space to Storage Space.
Ist also annoying that WS2012ES doesn't rebalance while using Parity. So if I insert a new Disk, i have to add several additional disks because of this behavior.

Please Microsoft Support your users and give us a patch or something like that.
With this Problems (Rebalancing / FreeUp unused Space) is Parity not useable.

Best regards

Tobias

Hello, I have this exact same problem on windows 2012 server. The only way to rectify the issue is to move my data and reformat the drive. The slab consolidate will then work. Does anybody have the resolution to this issue? Thanks

I'm in the same boat on Server 2012 R2 Essentials...

Only I've got five physical drives, totalling 18TB, a parity drive set to 16TB.  It says I'm using about 4TB but Storage Spaces is warning me I'm running low on space.  And if you look at the individual physical disk utilisation, it's right.  I'm assuming that because there's no slab consolidation going on and I'm somewhat write hungry, it's just never getting cosolidated or trimmed...

And whenever I manually try to trim/consolidate, it just sits on 0% of slab analysis...

If/when I upgrade to Server 2016, I think I'll install the Standard edition (which supports dedupe) and add the Essentials feature.  Rather than using the Essentials addition...