Creating Spanned Volume on XP

[homestarmy]

I have an XP Media Center 2005 computer that currently has one 160GB drive in it, and I want to add a second, and have it span accross to the second one to record shows, so it won't delete them when my first drive is full.

I have found a reference of how to do this on microsoft: link.

But I have some questions...

So I can do this without having to reformat the computer, right? As in, I want to keep my OS the way it is, and just add this drive, creating one larger drive. So I would install the second hard drive, then convert both items to dynamic disks by right clicking on the disk and choosing the option to convert etc, then following the directions in the link above?

Or should I convert the first drive to dynamic disks and then follow the directions under 'How to Extend a Simple of Spanned Volume' in the link?

I see now at the bottom that it says that the system or boot volume cannot be extended. Does this mean that my only option for spanning these two 160 GB drives is to put in another drive to run the OS and then spanning these two?

Thanks for any info!

 

[OdiN]

What...you can't just specify a second drive for recording? That sucks if MCE doesn't do that.

 

[homestarmy]

There is no way that I am aware of...

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: homestarmy
I have an XP Media Center 2005 computer that currently has one 160GB drive in it, and I want to add a second, and have it span accross to the second one to record shows, so it won't delete them when my first drive is full.

I have found a reference of how to do this on microsoft: link.

But I have some questions...

So I can do this without having to reformat the computer, right? As in, I want to keep my OS the way it is, and just add this drive, creating one larger drive. So I would install the second hard drive, then convert both items to dynamic disks by right clicking on the disk and choosing the option to convert etc, then following the directions in the link above?

Or should I convert the first drive to dynamic disks and then follow the directions under 'How to Extend a Simple of Spanned Volume' in the link?

I see now at the bottom that it says that the system or boot volume cannot be extended. Does this mean that my only option for spanning these two 160 GB drives is to put in another drive to run the OS and then spanning these two?

Thanks for any info!

As mentioned in another thread, TweakMCE, in the Winter Fun Pack 2004, will let you specify another drive / path for MCE video/TV files. I do exactly this to get around this exact issue. I have a 120GB boot drive and a 160GB secondary drive.

 

[homestarmy]

Right, but I have two 160GB drives. If I use TWEAK MCE, I can have it write to the second drive, but what about when it fills up? I would like it to then write to the other HDD. The first HDD only holds the OS, so it is almost just as empty as the second.

 

[homestarmy]

What I may just do is put in the second 160GB drive, then copy all of the TV stuff to it, leaving the boot drive almost empty, and then move the partition over to a smaller 80GB HDD.

That will leave the two 160GB Drives available to be spanned or used in a software RAID etc.

One question (maybe this has already been answered, I will read), if I have two spanned volumes and one dies, am I able to access the data on the drive that did not die? Logically, I would think so, but this is Microsoft, not logic... ok I spoke to someone here and he confirmed that I would lose data. So what is the purpose of using SPAN insted of Striping? Seems useless (like you guys have been trying to tell me).

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: homestarmy
Right, but I have two 160GB drives. If I use TWEAK MCE, I can have it write to the second drive, but what about when it fills up? I would like it to then write to the other HDD. The first HDD only holds the OS, so it is almost just as empty as the second.

Yep; there's no logic or smarts to it - it only looks at those two places for your TV files; it's up to you to manage what files are where.

When C: (where it records to) starts to fill up, I move files en masse to D:, and the GUI and the metadata stays with it and works flawlessly. It works great.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: homestarmy
What I may just do is put in the second 160GB drive, then copy all of the TV stuff to it, leaving the boot drive almost empty, and then move the partition over to a smaller 80GB HDD.

That will leave the two 160GB Drives available to be spanned or used in a software RAID etc.

One question (maybe this has already been answered, I will read), if I have two spanned volumes and one dies, am I able to access the data on the drive that did not die? Logically, I would think so, but this is Microsoft, not logic... ok I spoke to someone here and he confirmed that I would lose data. So what is the purpose of using SPAN insted of Striping? Seems useless (like you guys have been trying to tell me).

Span is nice because you can add disks after the fact - after you've initially formatted the drive. I'd thought it was server-side only for some reason; didn't realize MCE did it too.

I say "nice" as a very relative term. Both it and RAID0 (stripe without parity) are disasterous if the drive fails.

In short, don't do it. Just manually copy files once every month or so when the drive starts to fill up. It's really easy, and I've never had a problem.

With drives being so cheap these days....

 

[homestarmy]

Yeah, I'll probably just do that. Put in the second drive (which I had meant to already have done), move everything to it, and let it continue to record to where it has been recording. Then move when necessary via my easy remote desktop on my PPC or desktop.

Thanks for the guidance.

 

[dclive]

You can set up a weekly job to do that in XP - just have it copy all *.dvr-ms files from c:\tv to d:\tv at 3:00am.... remove all work from your hands.