Final answer:
Storage Spaces are created using a Storage Pool, which is a collection of free space from connected drives. Two-way mirroring requires a minimum of two disks and three-way mirroring requires at least five. Thin provisioning allows allocation of more space than available, assuming not all space will be used at once.
Step-by-step explanation:
Storage Spaces and Storage Pools
To create Storage Spaces, you use multiple hard drives to form a Storage Pool. A Storage Pool is an aggregation of unallocated space from disks that are connected to a computer, while a Storage Space is a virtual drive that has resiliency, and capacity features that can be defined by the user, carved out from the Storage Pool.
The hardware devices you can use to make Storage Pools include SATA, SAS, and USB drives, as long as they're not externally managed and don't have a different proprietary storage architecture managing them. The benefits of using Storage Pools include flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency, as they allow you to add storage as needed.
For two-way mirroring, a minimum of two disks is required. For three-way mirroring, you need at least five disks to ensure that each piece of data is written to three separate drives. Thin provisioning is a method used within Storage Spaces that allows you to allocate more storage space to users than what is physically available in the pool. It operates on the assumption that not all users will use all the allocated space simultaneously, allowing for over-committal of resources but can lead to issues if the actual usage exceeds the physical capacity.