is it possible to see two disks as a single partition without raid ?

[ZL1]

Hi

guys I was wondering is it possible to setup two disks to show up as a single partition without having a raid card ?


please let me know


Thank you
Dan

 

[live2game]

No it is not unless your system has raid built in to it.

 

[ts3433]

Your motherboard has to have its own RAID0, that's all. On a side note, though, quite a few on here would advise against RAID0 for most needs due to increased risk of array failure and such. I'll let others with first-hand experience elaborate.

 

[ZL1]

Originally posted by: ts3433
Your motherboard has to have its own RAID0, that's all. On a side note, though, quite a few on here would advise against RAID0 for most needs due to increased risk of array failure and such. I'll let others with first-hand experience elaborate.

yes I know raid0 is risky, thats why Im considering a software solution, not raid0 emulation, just a partition merging (maybe I should edit the title and remove raid0 from there)

I think Ive heard of this, even think it was a win tool, but I cant seem to remember so thats why Im asking



D

 

[tiap]

I remember doing doing it back in the dos days and maybe with win 95 but can't remember exactly how. I'm sure there is at least software that will do this thesedays.

 

[alexXx]

you can do it with winxp. right click my computer->manage

 

[ZL1]

Originally posted by: alexXx
you can do it with winxp. right click my computer->manage

yes I get to computer management and Im assuming then I go to disk management, but afterwards I dont know what to do
do I convert the disks to dynamic ?

please advise


Thank you
Dan

 

[Baked]

Here is your answer.

 

[ZL1]

Originally posted by: Baked
Here is your answer.

cool, thanks baked


by the way do you guys think spanning would increase the risk ? Im wondering what happens if one of the disk fails, do you loose the data from both disks or not ?



Thanks
Dan

 

[Zepper]

The JABOD function of some RAID controllers will do it - two (or more) disks into one without striping. And with JABOD, you don't need to bother with the Win Dynamic Disk stuff as it all happens before Win gets a look at the drives. So as far as Win is concerned, two or more drives are seen as one.
.bh.

:moon:

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: live2game
No it is not unless your system has raid built in to it.

INCORRECT! There is a little known trick using windows, but both drives must be reformatted and cannot to be used as boot devices (For that you will need a raid contoller) This only works on XP and 2000pro.
I have done this using drives of differant ages with out trouble.
Here are the STEPS:

[*]Right Click on My Computer
[*]When the menu drops down click on MANAGE
[*]Then Find where it says Disk Management and click on it, then wait for all of your drives to show up (it takes a moment)
[*]Now locate one of the drives on the bottom half of the window and right click on it . Then selcect Delete Partition
[*]Repeat the last step for the other drive you want to include in the single partition. Remember doing this will cause all data for the most part to be lost for good.

Forgive me here since It's been a while since I have done this And I am not about to do this on my current configuration; But I will set one up later so I can fix any errors in my Instructions.

[*]After deleting both partitions they can be then be recreated using the Disk Managment Utiltiy under My Computer This time instead of crating a basic disk like windows does at default make it Dynamic instead and format it with NTFS.
[*]Now make sure when creating a dynamic disk that you included the other drive with it.

Now after a reboot both drives should show up under windows as a single drive or two if you partition it that way. But either way it is still a single logical drive. And Make Sure that windows is installed on a separate Drive than the two that you are "binding" together in to a single drive.

I do not recomend this, for the simple reason when you access your data CPU usage goes up way high. My
Hitachi 7k250 uses less than 3% when used alone. But when made into a dynamic volume spanned with another drive, it causes my cpu to beat like the heart of a Crack addict.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: ZL1

Originally posted by: Baked
Here is your answer.

cool, thanks baked


by the way do you guys think spanning would increase the risk ? Im wondering what happens if one of the disk fails, do you loose the data from both disks or not ?



Thanks
Dan

Yes Dan you loose all of your data, unless you have a second Raid 0 Array that mirrors your data.

 

[ZL1]

Originally posted by: Zepper
The JABOD function of some RAID controllers will do it - two (or more) disks into one without striping. And with JABOD, you don't need to bother with the Win Dynamic Disk stuff as it all happens before Win gets a look at the drives. So as far as Win is concerned, two or more drives are seen as one.
.bh.

:moon:

yes I know of JBOD, but I was trying to find a software solution (didnt want to buy a raid card and then only use it for jbod, that would mean just buy a cheap card and that would mean its softraid, since raid cards have gone the softmodem route lately, and then whats the point ?)



D

P.S. wait the post did read "...without having a raid card ?" 🙂

 

[ZL1]

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: ZL1

Originally posted by: Baked
Here is your answer.

cool, thanks baked


by the way do you guys think spanning would increase the risk ? Im wondering what happens if one of the disk fails, do you loose the data from both disks or not ?



Thanks
Dan

Yes Dan you loose all of your data, unless you have a second Raid 0 Array that mirrors your data.

dude I followed your instructions and now all my data is gone, man what happened there ??????




P.S. I was just kidding, but I really dont get you man

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: ZL1
P.S. I was just kidding, but I really dont get you man

You don't understand how to do the software JBOD spanning in Windows (his explanation seemed pretty good...), or why your data is gone?

Think of it like a RAID0 without striping. If you suddently zeroed out half of your hard drive, you'd lose a lot of data, and if that half contained the boot records and file allocation tables, you'd lose *all* your data.

 

[arcas]

In non-Windows operating systems, this is referred to as logical volume management (I'm not sure what Microsoft calls it). Most major Un*x operating systems have support for some form of volume management, some more robust than others. The nice thing about a good volume manager is you can add drives to an existing volume group, then expand your existing filesystems to occupy the new space all without having to reformat. Highly recommended.

 

[ZL1]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: ZL1
P.S. I was just kidding, but I really dont get you man

You don't understand how to do the software JBOD spanning in Windows (his explanation seemed pretty good...), or why your data is gone?

Think of it like a RAID0 without striping. If you suddently zeroed out half of your hard drive, you'd lose a lot of data, and if that half contained the boot records and file allocation tables, you'd lose *all* your data.

I said "I dont get you" not "I dont get it", it was a joke
I was reffering to his "delete partition" instruction, you dont have to delete anything, you just right click and select "convert to dynamic"

I already knew the procedure, baked's link was quite helpful and after I knew the name of the procedure I also did some reasearch and learned quite a bit about it
right now Im deep into experimenting, a few hours later I will be posting results on performance in basic disk vs dynamic disk "spanned volume", dynamic disk "striped volume" (soft raid0) and hardware raid0
(cpu usage will also be included).


D

 

[ZL1]

Originally posted by: arcas
In non-Windows operating systems, this is referred to as logical volume management (I'm not sure what Microsoft calls it). Most major Un*x operating systems have support for some form of volume management, some more robust than others. The nice thing about a good volume manager is you can add drives to an existing volume group, then expand your existing filesystems to occupy the new space all without having to reformat. Highly recommended.

yap you can do this in windows 2k, xp and server as well, you create a group and if you add a new hdd later on you can add it without having to reformat.
very nice indeed, server actually has some wonderful tools, 2k and xp are limited to spanning and stripping while in server u can also do mirror and raid5, getting quite close to a real raid.


D

 

[Navid]

If you set up dynamic disk storage, using two hard drives to become a single drive, and later one of the two hard drives fails, what happens to the data?
Do you lose all of the data even the dat that is on the healthy drive?

I am just curious as to the reason one would do this? What is the benefit? Why not have each hard drive to have a partition?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Navid
If you set up dynamic disk storage, using two hard drives to become a single drive, and later one of the two hard drives fails, what happens to the data?
Do you lose all of the data even the dat that is on the healthy drive?

Depends on the OS and their exact implementation. In theory, as long as you didn't lose the file allocation tables (or analogous structures for NTFS/NFS/whatnot), you should be able to access any disk blocks that are still on living drives. From a logical point of view, it's like writing zeroes over all a big chunk of your hard drive.

I am just curious as to the reason one would do this? What is the benefit? Why not have each hard drive to have a partition?

Sometimes it's beneficial (or necessary) to have a single very large partition. This is much less useful on a desktop, where you're probably using 200+GB IDE/SATA drives. On a server, where you might be using 18, 36, or 74GB SCSI drives, it's an easy way to get a partition larger than a single drive's capacity without investing in a RAID controller.

 

[Zepper]

SiliconImage based IDE controllers are cheap and support ALL types of IDE drives as a normal controller, JABOD and RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 if the controller supports more than two drives. Probably the most flexible IDE controllers on the market today and they start at under $25. shipped. The JABOD function is mainly hardware. The card's BIOS configures the programmable controller chip at boot and you're off to the races.
.bh.

 

[ZL1]

Originally posted by: Navid
If you set up dynamic disk storage, using two hard drives to become a single drive, and later one of the two hard drives fails, what happens to the data?
Do you lose all of the data even the dat that is on the healthy drive?

I am just curious as to the reason one would do this? What is the benefit? Why not have each hard drive to have a partition?

as far as I know there is no fault tollerance, but thanks for bringing this up, I will experiment on this as well, I'll rip a hdd out of the disk group and see what happens 🙂
(I'll post results)

well right now my main motivation is fun, I have fun researching new stuff and experimenting with it
but I also have a few older hdds laying around and I thought Id try putting them to use and it would be much nicer combining them into one volume (see Matthias99's post).



D

 

[ZL1]

Done experimenting

ran experiments on an older p3, with an ide 4gb as system and two scsi 18gbs on adaptec 2940 and then megaraid1400
used 1gb of data (mixed file sized)
performance results, pretty much the same
cpu usage was again quite similar with slight improvement in basic setup and hardware raid0 (it usually was under 30, with some spikes)
no fault tollerance in any setup except basic of course, unfortunately

well what can I say, only real benefit is one partiton multiple disks, biggest loss - increased risk of data loss



D

PS: I would like to appologize to "Googer", my reply to your post was intended as a joke, but I see it wasnt thought over and it failed, Im sorry about that and I would like to thank you for taking your time and writing such a detailed post.

P.S.2 Zepper would you say SI controllers are good ? which brands are usually SI based ? I might consider a hardware solution if the price is this nice.