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    Combining 3 hard drives into one!

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by ronnieb, Oct 4, 2009.

  1. ronnieb

    ronnieb Representing the Canucks

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    So recently after building my gaming rig, I took my old school AMD rig and made it into a file server, stuffing it full of hard drives. Right now I have 3 hard drives, and was wondering if I could somehow combine the storage of all of them so it shows up as one big hard drive, which would be easier for using it as a file server I would think.

    Now, would I do this by putting them into a RAID array?

    The first hard drive is 80 gigs, and its partitioned into 15gigs XP/65 free, and then I have a 120 gig hard drive thats free, and a 160 gig thats free.

    Any ideas?
     
    ronnieb, Oct 4, 2009
    #1
  2. DetlevCM

    DetlevCM Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    I'm just thinking - doesn't hardware raid require identical drives?
     
    DetlevCM, Oct 4, 2009
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  3. gerryf19

    gerryf19 I am the walrus

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    You never mentioned the OS of the server

    the easiest way to do it in xp and later is to make all your disks dynamic disks and then span the volumes

    the drawback to this is if one of those disks goes bad, you lose everything (the result of any non-parity based raid setups)
     
    gerryf19, Oct 4, 2009
    #3
  4. ronnieb

    ronnieb Representing the Canucks

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    Well the AMD rig is running xp right now. Is what you said recommended? I hate working with so many drive letters
     
    ronnieb, Oct 4, 2009
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  5. surfasb

    surfasb Titles Shmm-itles

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    You could do what Gerry said. Convert to A dynamic disks and span the volume. It's cheap and simple.
     
    surfasb, Oct 4, 2009
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  6. BrandonSi

    BrandonSi Notebook Savant

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    Not really, but if you don't care if you lose the data, then it's no biggie. It's just three drive letters, not like 18, so me personally I'd just live with it.
     
    BrandonSi, Oct 4, 2009
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  7. surfasb

    surfasb Titles Shmm-itles

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    You could do what Gerry said. Convert to A dynamic disks and span the volume. It's cheap and simple.
     
    surfasb, Oct 4, 2009
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  8. ronnieb

    ronnieb Representing the Canucks

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    would i have to format the main driev with xp on it?

    and would i be donig this through disk management?
     
    ronnieb, Oct 4, 2009
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  9. surfasb

    surfasb Titles Shmm-itles

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    No to the format main drive,

    Yes to disk management.
     
    surfasb, Oct 4, 2009
    #9
  10. pacmandelight

    pacmandelight Notebook Deity

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    You can also mount physical drives as a folder in the main OS drive instead of mounting it to a driver letter.

    The partition for each drive will still be separate though. None of the drive space will be combined like in a dynamic disk or RAID.
     
    pacmandelight, Oct 4, 2009
    #10
  11. gerryf19

    gerryf19 I am the walrus

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    Please note, dynamic disks are NOT supported in Windows XP Home....you did not mention which flavor of XP you have.
     
    gerryf19, Oct 4, 2009
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  12. ronnieb

    ronnieb Representing the Canucks

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    Can you please elaborate more on this?

    I'm running XP Pro :O
     
    ronnieb, Oct 4, 2009
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  13. surfasb

    surfasb Titles Shmm-itles

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    When you right click a disk in disk management, you can choose to assign it a driver letter, or choose to mount it as a folder on an existing drive letter.
     
    surfasb, Oct 4, 2009
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  14. newsposter

    newsposter Notebook Virtuoso

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    considering that a 1 Tb disk costs less than $100-, it might be easier and more error-free to reload to 1 new disk and relegate the old drives to external enclosures as removable/transportable backup media.
     
    newsposter, Oct 4, 2009
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  15. surfasb

    surfasb Titles Shmm-itles

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    That costs money.

    That's a months worth of groceries.
     
    surfasb, Oct 4, 2009
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  16. newsposter

    newsposter Notebook Virtuoso

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    and how much time/data lost if your 'upgrade' blows up?
     
    newsposter, Oct 5, 2009
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  17. surfasb

    surfasb Titles Shmm-itles

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    Probably little considering I'll starve to death by then.
     
    surfasb, Oct 5, 2009
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  18. Trottel

    Trottel Notebook Virtuoso

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    Look up "JBOD" as it is exactly what you are talking about.
     
    Trottel, Oct 5, 2009
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  19. Bog

    Bog Losing it...

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    You could also go with the more complex solution by using OpenSolaris. With the ZFS filesystem, all the drives will show up as one volume.

    Why not?!
     
    Bog, Oct 5, 2009
    #19
  20. surfasb

    surfasb Titles Shmm-itles

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    Not too bad of an idea.
     
    surfasb, Oct 5, 2009
    #20