Bought a dual-disk USB enclosure and a couple of 1.5TB drives to put
into it. First of all, the enclosure has a built in concatenation
feature. When using that, Windows and Linux both see it as an 800 GB
drive, rather than a 3000 GB drive! So I put it back to regular mode,
and we see two separate 1.5 TB drives again.

Next I tried concatenating through Windows Disk Management. BTW, this is
Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64. When I use the Spanned Volume wizard, it
gives the error message, "Operation is not supported by object". I then
tried converting each disk from MBR partitions to the new GPT
partitions, it accepted that. I then retried the Spanned Volume wizard,
and the same message appeared. Then I tried converting them to Dynamic
disks, but it showed the "Operation is not supported by object" message
again. I think whatever the problem is, it's from this stage where it
tries to convert to dynamic disks. So why isn't it accepting the
conversion to dynamic disks?

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote:
> Bought a dual-disk USB enclosure and a couple of 1.5TB drives to put
> into it. First of all, the enclosure has a built in concatenation
> feature. When using that, Windows and Linux both see it as an 800 GB
> drive, rather than a 3000 GB drive! So I put it back to regular mode,
> and we see two separate 1.5 TB drives again.
>
> Next I tried concatenating through Windows Disk Management. BTW, this
> is Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64. When I use the Spanned Volume
> wizard, it gives the error message, "Operation is not supported by
> object". I then tried converting each disk from MBR partitions to the
> new GPT partitions, it accepted that. I then retried the Spanned
> Volume wizard, and the same message appeared. Then I tried converting
> them to Dynamic disks, but it showed the "Operation is not supported
> by object" message again. I think whatever the problem is, it's from
> this stage where it tries to convert to dynamic disks. So why isn't
> it accepting the conversion to dynamic disks?

A much more fundamental question is whether you really want to do that.

The **** hits the fan very comprehensively indeed if one of the drives dies.

On Mon, 29 Mar 2010 23:00:49 -0400 Yousuf Khan
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in Message id:
<4bb16962$(E-Mail Removed)>:

>Bought a dual-disk USB enclosure and a couple of 1.5TB drives to put
>into it. First of all, the enclosure has a built in concatenation
>feature. When using that, Windows and Linux both see it as an 800 GB
>drive, rather than a 3000 GB drive! So I put it back to regular mode,
>and we see two separate 1.5 TB drives again.
>
>Next I tried concatenating through Windows Disk Management. BTW, this is
>Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64. When I use the Spanned Volume wizard, it
>gives the error message, "Operation is not supported by object". I then
>tried converting each disk from MBR partitions to the new GPT
>partitions, it accepted that. I then retried the Spanned Volume wizard,
>and the same message appeared. Then I tried converting them to Dynamic
>disks, but it showed the "Operation is not supported by object" message
>again. I think whatever the problem is, it's from this stage where it
>tries to convert to dynamic disks. So why isn't it accepting the
>conversion to dynamic disks?

Just guessing here, but do USB devices support spanning natively?
See
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/...-e034e1137e03/

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Bought a dual-disk USB enclosure and a couple of 1.5TB drives to put
> into it. First of all, the enclosure has a built in concatenation
> feature. When using that, Windows and Linux both see it as an 800 GB
> drive, rather than a 3000 GB drive! So I put it back to regular mode,
> and we see two separate 1.5 TB drives again.

> Next I tried concatenating through Windows Disk Management. BTW, this is
> Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64. When I use the Spanned Volume wizard, it
> gives the error message, "Operation is not supported by object". I then
> tried converting each disk from MBR partitions to the new GPT
> partitions, it accepted that. I then retried the Spanned Volume wizard,
> and the same message appeared. Then I tried converting them to Dynamic
> disks, but it showed the "Operation is not supported by object" message
> again. I think whatever the problem is, it's from this stage where it
> tries to convert to dynamic disks. So why isn't it accepting the
> conversion to dynamic disks?

> Yousuf Khan

Maybe Windows thinks that you cannot possibly want to span on
removable devices? It has this habit of thinking it knows
what you do and do not want but at the same time is far too
stupid to pull it off.

Incidentially the 800GB seems to be a problem with the enclosure,
there is no limit (that I know of) at 39.5 bit adress length.
Maybe give this pice of trash back?

USB storage supports both SCSI 32 and SCSI 64 bit sector numbers.

Arno

--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: (E-Mail Removed)
GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans

JW wrote:
> Just guessing here, but do USB devices support spanning natively?
> See
> http://social.answers.microsoft.com/...-e034e1137e03/

Well according to that, it looks like (at least as of Windows 2000)
dynamic disks weren't supported on USB or Firewire disks.

Yousuf Khan

Rod Speed wrote:
> A much more fundamental question is whether you really want to do that.

Yeah, I do, I don't care about the points of failure argument. This is
going to be used as a backup device, for my other drives. It's going to
be unplugged and/or unpowered most of the rest of the time.

Yousuf Khan

Arno wrote:
> Maybe Windows thinks that you cannot possibly want to span on
> removable devices? It has this habit of thinking it knows
> what you do and do not want but at the same time is far too
> stupid to pull it off.

Yeah, it looks like the case here. The technote says Microsoft doesn't
support this on USB or Firewire drives.

> Incidentially the 800GB seems to be a problem with the enclosure,
> there is no limit (that I know of) at 39.5 bit adress length.
> Maybe give this pice of trash back?

Is it possible that there is a BIOS limitation, beyond 2TB? The
motherboard I'm using is a rather plain desktop mobo, it may not be
expecting such huge devices to join in?

> USB storage supports both SCSI 32 and SCSI 64 bit sector numbers.

Does the Windows USB mass storage driver treat them as SCSI devices?

Oh, BTW, when I tried spanning them through Windows' spanning wizard
(during initial setup prior to receiving the error message), it accepted
the combined size as 2794 GB, however it would only allow a filesystem
size of half of that to be created, 1397 GB! That's also the exact size
of each individual drive. So it looks like it wasn't going to accept
being spanned over two disks no matter what.

I also tried using Linux's LVM to do this, and it created similarly
sloppy results. I don't think it's got anything to do with any
limitations that the enclosure has, as the problems seem to be universal
throughout Windows and Linux.

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote
> JW wrote

>> Just guessing here, but do USB devices support spanning natively?
>> See
>> http://social.answers.microsoft.com/...-e034e1137e03/

> Well according to that, it looks like (at least as of Windows 2000)
> dynamic disks weren't supported on USB or Firewire disks.

It wouldnt be surprising if it isnt supported in any version of win,
essentially because thats very risky with removable drives.

Yousuf Khan wrote:
> Arno wrote:
>> Maybe Windows thinks that you cannot possibly want to span on
>> removable devices? It has this habit of thinking it knows
>> what you do and do not want but at the same time is far too
>> stupid to pull it off.
>
> Yeah, it looks like the case here. The technote says Microsoft doesn't
> support this on USB or Firewire drives.
>
>> Incidentially the 800GB seems to be a problem with the enclosure,
>> there is no limit (that I know of) at 39.5 bit adress length.
>> Maybe give this pice of trash back?
>
> Is it possible that there is a BIOS limitation, beyond 2TB? The
> motherboard I'm using is a rather plain desktop mobo, it may not be
> expecting such huge devices to join in?
>
>> USB storage supports both SCSI 32 and SCSI 64 bit sector numbers.
>
> Does the Windows USB mass storage driver treat them as SCSI devices?
>
> Oh, BTW, when I tried spanning them through Windows' spanning wizard
> (during initial setup prior to receiving the error message), it
> accepted the combined size as 2794 GB, however it would only allow a
> filesystem size of half of that to be created, 1397 GB! That's also
> the exact size of each individual drive. So it looks like it wasn't
> going to accept being spanned over two disks no matter what.
>
> I also tried using Linux's LVM to do this, and it created similarly
> sloppy results. I don't think it's got anything to do with any
> limitations that the enclosure has, as the problems seem to be
> universal throughout Windows and Linux.

Likely because they all decide that its much too risky to allow with removable drives.

Corse in your case both drives are in the same box, but its clear why they are being
so conservative when the result when one of the drives is removed is so catestrophic.

Rod Speed wrote:
> Yousuf Khan wrote
>> JW wrote
>
>>> Just guessing here, but do USB devices support spanning natively?
>>> See
>>> http://social.answers.microsoft.com/...-e034e1137e03/
>
>> Well according to that, it looks like (at least as of Windows 2000)
>> dynamic disks weren't supported on USB or Firewire disks.
>
> It wouldnt be surprising if it isnt supported in any version of win,
> essentially because thats very risky with removable drives.


Now the question is what would let me span these two drives together?

Yousuf Khan