I've just figured this after a lot of googling all I found were either:
- People asking "Why do you want to do that?"
- No answer
So sat down and figured it out myself.
The problem is the "Removable Disk" status of the flash drives. Windows doesn't let "Removable Disks" become part of the storage spaces pool.
Thus this is all you need to solve, convert all your USB Flash drives from "Removable" to "Fixed".
Searching around how to do this I found:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIJ4CQQShBw
"Convert USB flash drive to a Local Disk"
Basically two steps:
Step 1 Find the USB Controller type
Run a tool: usbflashinfo - GetFlashInfo.exe
This will dump the FlashDrive information.
In my case my 12 x 16GB USB Flash drives were all the same: Phison PS2307
Step 2 Find a Fixed Disk tool
Search for your Controller type. I used the site recommended in the youtube video http://flashboot.ru/ and found an app that simply converts from "Removable" to "Fixed" (and back if you want).
Results:
- I converted all 12 x 16GB flash drives to "Fixed"
- Plugged all 12 x flash drives (USB2.0) into a 12 port USB 2.0 Hub (non powered but it didn't seem to matter)
- Each drive I labeled 01USB -> 12USB matching the port they were plugged into, in-case one fails I'll be able to tell which one it is
- Ran windows Storage Spaces, all 12 USB Flash drives were shown
- Created a Pool of all 12 with Parity (striped) and got a total drive space of 110 GB
Testing:
- Copied 28,400 files, 3,633 folders, 2,162,576,510 bytes or (2.01 GB) from an SSD onto this storage spaces pool
- Very busty writes, often paused at 0 transfer then climbed back up to a reasonable rate
- Took a total of 23mins 15sec
So it's slow and bursty writing. But I'm rather impressed with the whole set-up.
Hope this helps you and who ever tried searching for a solution here.