Enabling JBOD

[yh125d]

So I got a couple Sammy 1.5TB drives that I want to team up for my main storage volume. I don't want RAID 1 or 0 so JBOD is fine. Now I have heard JBOD meaning two things colloquially, but what I want is the two drives showing as a single large 3TB volume.


Questions:

How is this done? I thought I could through Intel Matrix manager console, but I can only do RAID 0/1/5/10. I tried "new spanned volume" in Disk Management and it seemed to be working but at the final step it said "dynamic disks are not supported by this OS" (vista home prem 64)


I hear JBOD, disk spanning, and concatenation are all different. Which should I use. This is just a simple storage volume, with low speed requirements


Will I be able to migrate the volume to a new OS or motherboard and retain the data?


Will I be able to add drives later without disturbing the data?


Anything else I should know?

 

[RebateMonger]

Are you sure you have to have a single volume? You'll have to make them dynamic disks and make the resulting partition GPT. Standard Windows MBR partitioning only supports a maximum 2 TB-size volume, so that'll limit you. Since Vista Home Premium doesn't support dynamic disks, this will be a problem.

Why not just leave the disks as standard Basic disks, connect them to a standard SATA disk controller, and have two 1.5 TB volumes? It's simple and you can use pretty much any disk management or data recovery tool if necessary.

 

[yh125d]

I'm backing up a large "movie" folder that's currently about 2TB and I'd rather not have to split it up. I thought people did JBOD/spanning all the time in vista?

 

[RebateMonger]

I've made an error. I was thinking that GPT partitions can only be created on Dynamic disks, but they can be made on Basic disks, too. All forms of Vista can use GPT partitions for storing data.

So GPT can probably be done. You likely can't boot from it. If you span using Windows software spanning and lose one of the two data disks, all of the data from both disks will disappear from Windows. Windows has no built-in tools to recover a spanned array where one of the spanned disks has failed.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
I've made an error. I was thinking that GPT partitions can only be created on Dynamic disks, but they can be made on Basic disks, too.

Huh, GPT on basic disks? You sure about that?

 

[Nothinman]

I hear JBOD, disk spanning, and concatenation are all different. Which should I use. This is just a simple storage volume, with low speed requirements

I always used JBOD as meaning every disk is by itself, i.e. no RAID. But the usage may have changed. Disk spanning and concatenation sound the same, essentially you tack the second disk onto the end of the first.

But if the version of Vista you're running doesn't do dynamic disks (I didn't know they disabled that in some SKUs) and your controller won't do it, your'e screwed.

Huh, GPT on basic disks? You sure about that?

Yea, GPT is just a partition table.

 

[yh125d]

So am I just not able to do any sort of simple spanning/jbod/concatenation with vista? I thought people did this all the time...

 

[Nothinman]

So am I just not able to do any sort of simple spanning/jbod/concatenation with vista? I thought people did this all the time...

Windows' software RAID is tied to dynamic disks, you can't have one without the other.

 

[yh125d]

Sooooooooo looks like my only option for having one big disk is RAID 0 through my chipset. I didn't want to do this because of the inherent failure risk and how it's being used as a storage solution, but I can't really afford to buy two more drives right now for RAID 5 (which actually offers redundancy)



hmmm...... I need to contemplate my options. Any ideas I've missed are welcome

 

[Nothinman]

Sooooooooo looks like my only option for having one big disk is RAID 0 through my chipset. I didn't want to do this because of the inherent failure risk and how it's being used as a storage solution, but I can't really afford to buy two more drives right now for RAID 5 (which actually offers redundancy)

The risk of failure is in RAID0 is the same as concatenation, it's just a bit easier to use recovery tools with concatention since most will be on just one disk instead of spread across both disks.

 

[yh125d]

I could maybe try just an add-on controller... such as - http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16816124008 - that states JBOD support. Although I don't really want to add another expansion card, I think that will satisfy my concatenation needs, and be movable to a new motherboard/OS install without disturbing the data. Is this right? Would I be able to add drives to the concatenated set later?

 

[yh125d]

ok, ok, BIG problems. I turned on my 2TB external to copy stuff over, and windows said it needed to be diskchecked and whatnot. So I tell it to look for files that need repaired and scan for bad sectors. So I let it run overnight and get on this morning and its complete with no errors. So I go to my computer and open up the directory, and theres nothing. nada. On the my computer page it says "66gb free of 1.81TB" so I think the data must still be there, but I click on the drive and it shows nothing. I've rebooted, restarted the drive, but I don't know why the data isn't showing up. Any ideas?



Another related problem, I have the media on the 2TB drive backed up across two 1TB drives, one external one internal. The external one is fine, showing all data and everything, but now the internal one which has half my media backup shows as not initialized in disk management. Should I initialize it and hope my data is accessible?


Both started after I plugged in the two new 1.5TB drives

 

[yh125d]

Anyone? It's really important I get that media back

 

[CurseTheSky]

I'm going to guess that playing with a setting somewhere caused the problem.

In any event, try a Linux Live CD, like Ubuntu. It's quick and easy, and even though there are no guarantees, it's worth a shot.

 

[yh125d]

Well, the file system on my 2TB external (main media storage) is corrupted and fubar. Also, somehow the partition on one of my two 1TB drives functioning as backup got deleted, so 1/2 of my backup is gone. I am very pissed right now. Both of these seem to have happened right after I plugged in my new 1.5TB drives. Could that have somehow caused this? Was the corrupted file system and deleted partition a sign that those drives are dying or dead, or is it a random error and they should be safe to use again?