How does Windows Storage Space deal with partition fragmentation? Will this cause performance issues?

I'm using Windows Storage Space with multiple hard drives.

If I create multiple virtual disks, then delete some of them, and resize some of them, will the virtual disk be finally divided into multiple fragments and will these fragments be located everywhere across all these hard drives?

For example: If VirtualDisk1's first 1TB is located at the beginning of PhysicalDrive4, and VirtualDisk1's second 1TB is located at the end of PhysicalDrive4, VirtualDisk1's last 3TB is on PhysicalDrive5, and VirtualDisk2, VirtualDisk3, etc.

Demonstration picture of such fragmentation

I wonder if such fragmentation will cause performance issues and how does Windows deal with such situations and how does Windows optimize storage space for this scenario?


Solution 1:

Slabs which are file system cluster equivalents are quite big. So yes, you’ll get fragmentation but no, you won’t notice any performance impact. Really.