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I was trying to create a mirrored drive in Disk Management, but I kept on getting this error:

"All disks holding extents for a given volume must have the same sector size, and the sector size must be valid."

Contango
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  • I now have this problem in Windows 10, 1803. In 16xx I had a mirrored set and it was happy. When I did a re-format re-install on 1803, my 2nd disk set miror was broken, and now I get this error...
    Very annoying.     – MikeP Jun 10 '18 at 06:42

3 Answers3

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The problem is that I was starting with a drive full of data, and wanted to add a mirror of said drive.

This will not always work, and the error it gives is meaningless at best, and misleading at worst.

A solution is to start with two unallocated volumes, and select "New Mirrored Volume":

enter image description here

There are loads of videos on YouTube which describe how to do this, the one that I successfully used was Set up a Mirrored Array in Windows 7.

Update

It is possible to avoid this error, see the answer from @CyberPonk.

Contango
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2

I had this problem as well. I am on Windows 10 Version 1607 and I had my data volume in a mirror with 2 1TB drives (My system drive is a Samsung SSD). I did a warranty replacement with Seagate and when the replacement arrived, I was unable to add it to my mirror due to this issue. Using diskpart or diskmgmt.msc did not work. ...In the end, using the good drive in the mirror, I copied all the data on the remaining good drive to another 2TB drive I had lying around. I used diskpart's CLEAN command on both 1TB Seagate drives and then I was able to mirror them without complaints from windows.

Other things I noted during the process:

  • Using Seatool (Seagate Disk Tools Software) the new replacement 1TB drive has the same Logical Sector size = 512, BUT a different larger physical sector size (older drive = 512, replacement = 4096). I suspect this might have been the cause, but it does not explain why I was able to mirror the drives after using the diskpart CLEAN command.
  • The other thing I tried was a Storage Pool, and that did not work at all even after using the diskpart CLEAN Command.
Amace
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    I have also upgraded to Windows 10 since this question, and I've been using Storage Spaces in mirror mode. It works well, and it is reliable. Storage spaces fixes the issues on this thread, as it allows a failed drive to be replaced without having to rebuild everything from scratch. – Contango Dec 15 '16 at 00:30
  • Contango, a problem with Storage Spaces is that it will not allow RAID1 (mirroring) of the boot drive. That makes it useless if (like the vast majority of computers) your computer has fewer than three drives. – Dave Burton Jan 27 '24 at 23:59
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I had this error too, and managed to get passed it by doing the process from DISKPART instead of disk management GUI.

To do that, open DISKPART from a command prompt, then (assuming disk 1 is the source drive, and disk 2 is the destination drive)

rescan
select disk 1 
convert dynamic
select disk 2
convert dynamic

list volume
(then find the volume number for the partition you wish to mirror)
assuming this volume is 1:

select volume 1
add disk=2

That should do what disk management coudn´t

cyberponk
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    Same error message from within diskpart: Virtual Disk Service Error: All disks holding extents for a given volume must have the same sector size, and the sector size must be valid. – erict Apr 15 '17 at 17:19