RE: Adding drives to my Media Server

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Err. as I recall there is a not-very-obvious option during setup that
allows you to set the path for the windows install directory... - certainly
there are options to do the formatting of the partitions, and to select
WHICH partition you want to install on that are very obviously there, but
there is also an option to get to an input box that lets you specify the
windows install folder as well (although I hardly ever use that option).

One thing with spanned volumes to bear in mind is that they are filled up
discretely, - as if they were two seperate volumes, - i.e. data will be
written exclusively to one drive first, and then will "spill
over" onto the 2nd drive only when the first is full (all this is
transparent of course..) - this has a couple of implications...

1) there is no performance difference than if they were kept seperate,
unlike being striped, when data is written across both drives
simultaneously, which improves read rates

2) on the other hand, I have found that in most cases the data on either
drive remains intact and can still be read, even if the spanned set is
broken, so for instance, if one drive fails, you can usually continue to
use the other, even to the point of putting it in another machine to
recover the data. This is clearly never possible with a striped volume
set...

Paul G.


________________________________

From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx on behalf of Simon Ryley
Sent: Fri 20/01/2006 13:11
To: UKHA_D Group
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] Adding drives to my Media Server



Paul

Thanks for the info, I think the way to go is to make a spanned volume
so I end up with a 320Gb volume.   Is there any way to force the OS to
put some files on a particular drive? It would be nice to guarantee that
the Ghost of my windows install is definitely on a different physical
drive...

Everything important on the pictures and music front is already backed
up and stored elsewhere.  You only make that mistake once...

Simon

Paul Gordon wrote:

> Doh! - just reread your question and saw the point re the onboard
RAID...
>
> A couple of other things to note...
>
> If you configure the 2 drives into a single RAID volume in hardware,
> it will very highly likely be destructive to all the data on both
> drives.... - you currently have your XP install on this drive... - do
> you want to retain that, or are you happy to reformat &
rebuild?...
> RAID controllers are pretty much ignorant of partitions, and only
> see/care about/talk to physical disks as a single unit for the
> purposes of building a RAID set...
>
> Also, is your 80GB drive already partioned into more than 1, or is it
> a single big 80GB partition? - you're likely to need/want to split it
> into two for some of the options that are available to you.... so you
> may need to get in there with partition magic or its ilk to tinker
> with the partitioning.... - unless of course you're happy to reformat
> it to achieve this, thus losing all your existing data... (did I say
> backup??)
>
> Another thing you might want to consider, as an extension of my backup
> suggestion in my previous reply, is using image backups to save your
> C:\ drive as well. (Norton Ghost or PQI ImageCenter spring to mind,
> but there are others). I have always found it absolutely invaluable to
> always have an image of the system drive stored on a seperate physical
> disk on every PC I have ever built... - absolutely brilliant for rapid
> recovery from almost anything that can go wrong with it!
>
> Paul G.
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx on behalf of Simon Ryley
> Sent: Thu 19/01/2006 13:08
> To: UKHA_D Group
> Subject: [ukha_d] Adding drives to my Media Server
>
>
>
> The time has come when the little 80Gb hard disc in my media server
> isn't big enough to store all the pictures, mp3s and freeview
recordings
> we now have.  So I'm looking to upgrade..
>
> Current spec is a Spinpoint SATA 80Gb, holding windows xp, a few gig
of
> photos, 10g of mp3s and the rest as freeview recordings.
>
> For performance reasons, I'd like to put the recordings on a separate
> drive, probably a 250Gb Spinpoint SATA.  This leaves me with an 80Gb
> drive that will be barely used.  Is there any way in windows or
> otherwise to combine the two drives to one big virtual drive, giving
me
> about 60Gb of extra recording space, and hopefully improving the data
> throughput as I am using both Sata channels in parallel?  The
> motherboard does support Raid, but I've not been down that route
before.
>
> Is this a sensible option, and if not, does anyone have a small
> Spinpoint sata drive they no longer want?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Simon
>
>
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> Yahoo! Groups Links
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> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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