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 the man
teh
Registered: 08/12/99
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 can you span 2 HDD with data already on them?
#8694824 - 07/28/08 09:50 PM (3 months, 24 days ago) |
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thats about it. thanks
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 MHbound
Ballin Out At All Cost
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Re: can you span 2 HDD with data already on them? [Re: the man]
#8694955 - 07/28/08 10:11 PM (3 months, 24 days ago) |
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You betcha you can,
But how to go about doing it depends more on your drives and other hardware and less on just them being the same size.
For all RAID 0 or striped RAID formations
(redundant array of Independent Disks)
IT is HIGHLY recommended that both drives be the same size and model. You can create a striped set of equal partitions using spanning, but to really get the benefit of a striped set its better to do so with hardware.
The biggest question is what type of drives are they?
If the drives are SATA then usually the mainboard will have an embedded RAID controller built in.
You would need to erase both drives (no partitions) enter the raid setup on boot create the set , then re-install Windows (on nt/xp using the f6 option to install third party drivers)
You MUST install third party drivers on a clean install if you use this method to be safe you will not have potential data corruption.
there are ways to get around it but the partition will not be sound otherwise and Ive seen tables disassemble
IF you are using IDE drives you will need to purchase a special controller such as a promisetech or silicon i680 RAID IDE device.
The setup is essentially the same, but when installing IDE drives it's best to ensure that Primary drives are striped together and secondary drives are striped together as a system can only access one drive on an IDE cable at a time.
The biggest and only justifiable reason to do all of this is performance as both drives in a "0 set" are accessed simultaneously, helping to eliminate the biggest bottleneck in your system.
I don't think you can span them while they are in use. They need to be formatted first. I may be wrong though.
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Edited by MHbound (07/28/08 10:13 PM)
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the man
teh
Registered: 08/12/99
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Re: can you span 2 HDD with data already on them? [Re: MHbound]
#8695659 - 07/29/08 01:30 AM (3 months, 24 days ago) |
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sorry teh idea was to keep data on them somehow and just get teh computer to read teh 2 HDD as one. they are sata
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delta9
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Re: can you span 2 HDD with data already on them? [Re: the man]
#8695873 - 07/29/08 03:03 AM (3 months, 24 days ago) |
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You can either make them one hard drive via RAID [0, 1, or 10,] LVM, or LVM using the RAID disk. Otherwise, your options are somewhat limited.
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delta9
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Seuss
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Re: can you span 2 HDD with data already on them? [Re: the man]
#8695899 - 07/29/08 03:18 AM (3 months, 24 days ago) |
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> can you span 2 HDD with data already on them?
Short answer, yes, on some systems, such as DGUX... (long answer) however, I have never seen a low end PC RAID solution that allowed this, thus in your case, very unlikely.
If you really want to stripe the drives, you will need to back the data off to something else first. Remember, without redundancy, if you lose one physical drive in the stripe, you lose the entire virtual drive.
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delta9
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Re: can you span 2 HDD with data already on them? [Re: the man]
#8695929 - 07/29/08 03:32 AM (3 months, 24 days ago) |
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>Remember, without redundancy, if you lose one physical drive in the stripe, you lose the entire virtual drive.
That's why he should really go RAID 1 and mirror the data. Rebuilding a RAID 1 array is extremely simple and instantly provides a redundant mirror; the problem is when BOTH drives die - but you can have three (or more) drives in a RAID (probably want a PCI RAID card as well) and then that opens the possibility of doing RAID 5, which will let you have DISKS - 1 space. If you have a RAID card and three terrabyte drives in RAID 5 you'll have two terrabytes of space, one drive can die and you can replace it with a new drive and recover most data.
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delta9
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MHbound
Ballin Out At All Cost
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Re: can you span 2 HDD with data already on them? [Re: delta9]
#8697113 - 07/29/08 11:54 AM (3 months, 23 days ago) |
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It would be very very hard. It would be a very tedious process, and there is a very good chance that you end up with corrupted data. I would backup everything, and then try it.
High end PC's(networks and so forth) have things in place to make this easy. The average end users PC is not quite so easy. I would say backup everything, and do a clean install after you format. Then you COULD get it to work...Would it be easy? Shit no. You'll spend hours, and probably days getting it to work with SATA. The most important thing IMO with SATA is going to be formatting, its a must.
I honestly don't have much experience doing this. I don't like doing it. The multiple drives rely too much on one another. If you do one thing wrong it can send a chain of corruption from one drive to the next.
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