Two Drives Presented As One "Thing"?

P

(PeteCresswell)

XP Pro SP3.

My 24-7 box runs my SageTV media server and is currently saving
everything to a NAS box.

NAS box is flirting with 90% (those old Benny Hill shows just
keep on coming and coming...) and 3 out it it's 7 gigs are
dedicated to a directory containing recorded TV.

To break the log jam, I popped a couple of two-giggers into the
Sage box and started copying all the recorded TV to them.

Part of my backup process is a weekly synch of all data to an old
Windows Home Server PC.

It would more convenient if the software involved could still see
all my recorded TV as one "Thing" - whether it be a share, a RAID
array, a directory, or whatever.

I was going to use an old RocketRaid 2300 card and build an
array, but wimped out after reading a few horror stories.

Instead, I'm just copying files that start with A-L to one drive
and the rest to the other drive with the intent of changing my
backup process to mirror each drive to a different share on the
NAS box.

But keeping the contents of both drives as one "Thing" would have
certain conveniences factors - continuity of back up among them.

So, the question:

Is there anything within Windows XP Pro that would aggregate the
contents of two drives and present them as one - without any
additional hardware? Write speed would not be a factor if the
media server could still write to the separate devices.
 
C

Char Jackson

XP Pro SP3.

My 24-7 box runs my SageTV media server and is currently saving
everything to a NAS box.

NAS box is flirting with 90% (those old Benny Hill shows just
keep on coming and coming...) and 3 out it it's 7 gigs are
dedicated to a directory containing recorded TV.

To break the log jam, I popped a couple of two-giggers into the
Sage box and started copying all the recorded TV to them.

I think you mean Terabytes rather than Gigabytes. I'm in the same boat
here. My SageTV box has 32 Terabytes of storage, and it's mostly
filled.
Part of my backup process is a weekly synch of all data to an old
Windows Home Server PC.

It would more convenient if the software involved could still see
all my recorded TV as one "Thing" - whether it be a share, a RAID
array, a directory, or whatever.

I was going to use an old RocketRaid 2300 card and build an
array, but wimped out after reading a few horror stories.

Instead, I'm just copying files that start with A-L to one drive
and the rest to the other drive with the intent of changing my
backup process to mirror each drive to a different share on the
NAS box.

But keeping the contents of both drives as one "Thing" would have
certain conveniences factors - continuity of back up among them.

So, the question:

Is there anything within Windows XP Pro that would aggregate the
contents of two drives and present them as one - without any
additional hardware? Write speed would not be a factor if the
media server could still write to the separate devices.

Drive pooling would be an elegant solution, but XP doesn't offer that
capability. You can mount a drive into an empty directory on another
drive (rather than assigning a drive letter) so that they appear to be
pooled, but underneath the slick appearance you still have to manage
the individual storage limits of each drive. You write to each drive
by writing to its folder rather than its drive letter.

The previous versions of Windows Home Server included a feature called
Drive Extender, which was essentially drive pooling, but for some
reason the new WHS removed that feature. There are third party apps
that claim to offer drive pooling, but I haven't tried them. One
called Drive Bender looks the most polished to me. Not free, but it
does have a free trial. <http://www.drivebender.com/>
 
C

Char Jackson

From: "(PeteCresswell)" <[email protected]>

| XP Pro SP3.
|
| Is there anything within Windows XP Pro that would aggregate the
| contents of two drives and present them as one - without any
| additional hardware? Write speed would not be a factor if the
| media server could still write to the separate devices.


No. You need hardware.

Are you thinking RAID, or something else?

As for needing hardware, not quite. There are quite a few software
solutions available. Drive Bender is one that I mentioned in this
thread that works with XP, but there are others.
There is nothiong in XP to make two drives appear as one volume.

NTFS mount points sort of do exactly that, but with a few
disadvantages. I currently have 4 2TB drives mounted that way so they
appear as a single volume, then I have 5 more 2TB drives mounted that
way to appear as a single volume, and then 5 more 2TB drives appearing
as another volume. To the OS, those are 3 volumes, but underneath the
veneer they are 14 2TB drives. It's not great, it's not elegant, but
it works if you can live with the downsides.
 
P

Paul

(PeteCresswell) said:
XP Pro SP3.

My 24-7 box runs my SageTV media server and is currently saving
everything to a NAS box.

NAS box is flirting with 90% (those old Benny Hill shows just
keep on coming and coming...) and 3 out it it's 7 gigs are
dedicated to a directory containing recorded TV.

To break the log jam, I popped a couple of two-giggers into the
Sage box and started copying all the recorded TV to them.

Part of my backup process is a weekly synch of all data to an old
Windows Home Server PC.

It would more convenient if the software involved could still see
all my recorded TV as one "Thing" - whether it be a share, a RAID
array, a directory, or whatever.

I was going to use an old RocketRaid 2300 card and build an
array, but wimped out after reading a few horror stories.

Instead, I'm just copying files that start with A-L to one drive
and the rest to the other drive with the intent of changing my
backup process to mirror each drive to a different share on the
NAS box.

But keeping the contents of both drives as one "Thing" would have
certain conveniences factors - continuity of back up among them.

So, the question:

Is there anything within Windows XP Pro that would aggregate the
contents of two drives and present them as one - without any
additional hardware? Write speed would not be a factor if the
media server could still write to the separate devices.

I doubt that it's that easy to do. But you can have a look around.
Search keywords might be "span", "dynamic disk", "logical volume management",
"distributed file system" or the like. I found one example while looking,
that actually allows storing files spanned across multiple servers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_file_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_systems#Distributed_file_systems

There is this, but it looks like a business product (can't see a price).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleversafe

"Dispersed storage is a technology that uses erasure codes to
split data into multiple slices, each of which is then stored to an
independent storage appliance via TCP/IP."

*******

I suppose we should verify one thing. And that is, what is the
OS in the NAS box ? Is it WinXP ? If so, you have the option
of using Dynamic Disk and spanning two physical disks, to make
a larger logical volume.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308424

This picture sorta gets the idea across.

http://www.dynamic-disk.com/img/is-dynamic/spanned-volume.gif

You'd do that on the server end (inside the NAS), on the assumption
you're using WinXP as your server.

If WinXP is the client OS, and the NAS is using something else,
then there may be some other solution available.

It's even possible to do software RAID in WinXP. Tomshardware
had a trick for doing that. This avoids the need to put a
hardware RAID controller in the machine. But it also relies
on the CPU to compute XOR and the like. And who knows what
happens on a disk failure ??? There is no mention of
how easy or convenient maintenance is, when the array needs
to be rebuilt. That's an important part of selecting
RAID controller solutions, is getting designs where the
maintenance features work well. (I remember one guy, waiting
a whole week, for his array to rebuild after a disk replacement...
You don't want that kind of crap.)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windowsxp-make-raid-5-happen,925.html

(First, some clever hacking, and then...)
copy a:\dmboot.sys system32\drivers
copy a:\dmboot.sys system32\dllcache
copy a:\dmconfig.dll system32
copy a:\dmconfig.dll system32\dllcache
copy a:\dmadmin.exe system32
copy a:\dmadmin.exe system32\dllcache

That article was written 8 years ago, so much could have changed
since then.

*******

It's probably not that easy to do, but you never know what you
might find when searching for an answer.

Paul
 
C

Char Jackson

From: "Char Jackson" <[email protected]>

| On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:23:26 -0500, "David H. Lipman"

|
| Are you thinking RAID, or something else?
|
| As for needing hardware, not quite. There are quite a few software
| solutions available. Drive Bender is one that I mentioned in this
| thread that works with XP, but there are others.
|
|
| NTFS mount points sort of do exactly that, but with a few
| disadvantages. I currently have 4 2TB drives mounted that way so they
| appear as a single volume, then I have 5 more 2TB drives mounted that
| way to appear as a single volume, and then 5 more 2TB drives appearing
| as another volume. To the OS, those are 3 volumes, but underneath the
| veneer they are 14 2TB drives. It's not great, it's not elegant, but
| it works if you can live with the downsides.

I have come accross multiple hard disk controllers using asymetrical
multiprocessing where a CPU is embedded on the hard disk controller and the
user (trough out of band communications) can setup the disks connected to
the controller in multiple fashions. To the OS, it just sees a virtual
volume.

I've seen those too, usually in an external 2-, 3-, or 4-drive
enclosure. I don't think that, (the external option), would be my
first choice. Fortunately, there are quite a few options available,
both hardware, software, and even built in to XP.
 
P

(PeteCresswell)

Per Char Jackson:
The previous versions of Windows Home Server included a feature called
Drive Extender, which was essentially drive pooling, but for some
reason the new WHS removed that feature. There are third party apps
that claim to offer drive pooling, but I haven't tried them. One
called Drive Bender looks the most polished to me. Not free, but it
does have a free trial. <http://www.drivebender.com/>

References to mounting as a folder where what got my hopes up.

I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and have SageTV manage
two separate drives - and mirror them to the WSH box separately
for backups.

My understanding is that Sage can manage multiple drives -
steering recordings to one or the other depending on who is full
and who has space.

In the beginning of all this, I thought I was going to buy myself
some backup continuity on theWSH box... but that's not exactly a
big deal, since everything except my media gets backed up daily
to removable drives anyhow.
 
C

Char Jackson

From: "Char Jackson" <[email protected]>

| On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:53:38 -0500, "David H. Lipman"

|
| I've seen those too, usually in an external 2-, 3-, or 4-drive
| enclosure. I don't think that, (the external option), would be my
| first choice. Fortunately, there are quite a few options available,
| both hardware, software, and even built in to XP.

Hardware options are the best choice. Software options - no.

Well, no. 'Best' depends on the user's specific criteria. If lower
cost, better flexibility, expandability, and extensible feature set
are the motivators, you'll want a software option. If you can
sacrifice most of those things, hardware options are available but
they fit a much smaller niche.

IMHO, if free is required, use the methods built into XP, the ones you
said don't exist. If flexibility and expandability are key, then
software is the ideal choice. If your needs are very limited and never
expected to change, hardware can be a good choice, but as stated
above, those scenarios will be limited.
 
C

Char Jackson

References to mounting as a folder where what got my hopes up.

I don't think it would help in your case. It might look like it at
first, but you still have the same drive space limits that you had
before, so nothing significant is gained.
I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and have SageTV manage
two separate drives - and mirror them to the WSH box separately
for backups.

My understanding is that Sage can manage multiple drives -
steering recordings to one or the other depending on who is full
and who has space.

Yep, sure can. I love Sage.
 
C

Char Jackson

That is the way I merge two drives together. It works great here.

It works great up to a point, but it doesn't help you manage drive
space at all. In fact, it makes it much harder to manage drive space
since you can't see the available space for any of the drives except
the main drive, the one that has the others mounted to it. For that
reason alone I'll probably stop using it.
 
C

Char Jackson

No. Best is from the persepective of usability, portability, data migration
and upgradability.

IMHO, you just described software solutions.
I've been through it. Software solutions are dead ends.

I would have said that exact thing about hardware solutions.
If you have to
migrate the volume or upgrade the system the software methodology can leave
you in a non-working condition.

Likewise, if your hardware solution craps out or stops being
supported, you're left in a potentially non-working condition.
You are dependent upon the OS and it is
often the case that one OS won't implement it the same way as another.

The software solutions I've looked at are supported in XP, Vista
32/64, and 7 32/64. That's good enough for me, but not for everyone.
The
hardware methodology provides a virtual volume to whatever the OS (based
upon the availability of a OS driver). This means that if you have to
upgrade the OS or port the data to a different system there is no dependency
other than an OS driver.

Exactly the same for the software solutions I've looked at. Pools can
be moved to a new system, a rebuilt system, whatever.
Additionally since the hardware does all the work
there is no added burdon to the OS in maintaing the volume. The controller
does all the work using an assymetrical multiprocessing application.

The software solutions concede a non-zero system impact, but I can't
say for sure if it's noticeable. I suspect not.

Naturally, you left out the weaknesses of most hardware solutions,
like their inflexibility, lack of upgrade path, locked feature set, no
drive expandability beyond what they give you out of the box,
requirement to take up a card slot or eSATA port, inability to
non-destructively add drives with data to an existing pool, inability
to remove drives and read their data on any other PC, inability to add
a partial drive, and so on.
Having the controller maintain the volume is the best methodology.

I disagree, of course. Thanks for the discussion.
 
P

Patok

Char said:
It works great up to a point, but it doesn't help you manage drive
space at all. In fact, it makes it much harder to manage drive space
since you can't see the available space for any of the drives except
the main drive, the one that has the others mounted to it.

Huh? For the main drive, you see the space available on that drive.
When you look at the folders representing mounted drives, you see the
space available on those drives. What you wrote is simply not true.
 
C

Char Jackson

Huh? For the main drive, you see the space available on that drive.
When you look at the folders representing mounted drives, you see the
space available on those drives. What you wrote is simply not true.

You're right! Thanks, I didn't notice that and it was irritating me.
 
P

(PeteCresswell)

Per Char Jackson:
Yep, sure can. I love Sage.

I can't help thinking, when Google bought out Sage, that - albeit
in a very, very small way - they violated their "Do No Evil"
guideline.

FWIW, on the old WSH box I use for media backup, *two* (count
'em: 2) drives suddenly failed - just at this critical juncture.

Over the years I've had one drive fail here and one drive fail
there.... but never two at once... and *now*... ??

Maybe there really is a G-d..... but with a nasty sense of
humor....
 
D

David H. Lipman

From: "Char Jackson said:
IMHO, you just described software solutions.


I would have said that exact thing about hardware solutions.


Likewise, if your hardware solution craps out or stops being
supported, you're left in a potentially non-working condition.


The software solutions I've looked at are supported in XP, Vista
32/64, and 7 32/64. That's good enough for me, but not for everyone.


Exactly the same for the software solutions I've looked at. Pools can
be moved to a new system, a rebuilt system, whatever.


The software solutions concede a non-zero system impact, but I can't
say for sure if it's noticeable. I suspect not.

Naturally, you left out the weaknesses of most hardware solutions,
like their inflexibility, lack of upgrade path, locked feature set, no
drive expandability beyond what they give you out of the box,
requirement to take up a card slot or eSATA port, inability to
non-destructively add drives with data to an existing pool, inability
to remove drives and read their data on any other PC, inability to add
a partial drive, and so on.


I disagree, of course. Thanks for the discussion.

The thing is I am not basing this on solutions I have looked at. I am basing it on
actuall administrative experience which included a "lost weekend."
 
C

Char Jackson

Per Char Jackson:

I can't help thinking, when Google bought out Sage, that - albeit
in a very, very small way - they violated their "Do No Evil"
guideline.

FWIW, on the old WSH box I use for media backup, *two* (count
'em: 2) drives suddenly failed - just at this critical juncture.

Over the years I've had one drive fail here and one drive fail
there.... but never two at once... and *now*... ??

Maybe there really is a G-d..... but with a nasty sense of
humor....

Hush! :) My Sage system is coming up on it's 16 month anniversary, so
I haven't had any drives die yet. They're mechanical devices, though,
so it's just a matter of time.

Did you lose any critical data? I'm looking at solutions like FlexRAID
(and another that I can't think of right now) to protect the data in
case of multiple drive failure.
 
P

(PeteCresswell)

Per Char Jackson:
Hush! :) My Sage system is coming up on it's 16 month anniversary, so
I haven't had any drives die yet. They're mechanical devices, though,
so it's just a matter of time.

Did you lose any critical data? I'm looking at solutions like FlexRAID
(and another that I can't think of right now) to protect the data in
case of multiple drive failure.

No, just the last backup of my media files - most of which are
either disposable (recorded TV), sitting on DVDs in my closet, or
available via the local library and/or NetFlix.

According to Beyond Compare (the classiest application I've ever
owned....) I seem to have lost about a dozen recorded tv shows to
partial or aborted copies bco my bone-headed decision to use
Windows drag/drop to copy the data instead of using Beyond
Compare's tools.

Right now I keep all my stuff on a NetGear "Ultra-6" NAS box:
six 2-TB drives with redundancy such that two drives can fail
with no loss of data and failed drives can be hot-swapped out and
replaced with new drives with no interruption of access to the
box.

My actual "data" (photos, music, developer stuff, documents...)
is a lot less than 1 TB and I have a half-dozen 1-TB drives that
I rotate and back up to via a file copy utility called "Second
Copy".

One drive is always mounted in a sled on my 24-7 box and a couple
of them are on my workstation's shelf. They all get rotated
between my car, the garden shed, and a remote location.

The new scheme will be about the same backup-wise except that the
recorded TV part of the media will be offloaded from the NAS to
the 24-7 box that runs Sage. Once I replace the failed WSH box
drives, I will continue to do a weekly (or when I think of it...)
mirror to the WSH box.

I moved from WHS to NAS bco the hot-swap feature. Losing a
drive on the WHS box meant taking the thing down for at least a
day while the array was rebuilt using the replacement drive.

If I were doing it over again, I think I'd spring for the Ultra-8
or Ultra-10 or whatever it is that holds more drives.

As it is, I think I will replace those WHS box drives with
2-giggers that I pull from the NAS box and then replace the NAS
box drives with 3-giggers against the day when I accumulate
enough 3-giggers that the box will expand it's capacity.
 
P

(PeteCresswell)

Per Char Jackson:
Did you lose any critical data?

Late-breaking After the third or fourth reboot of the WSH
box, it came up with all drives intact. My money is on the
two-port SATA card I have in there to get around the mobo's
6-drive limit.

Before I started shopping for the NAS box, I was looking in to
building my own RAID-based server - but I got scared off by
various horror stories and my own assessment of my competence (or
lack thereof...).

After a few problems at the beginning, the NAS box has worked out
well. It only pulls 90-some watts. Early in the game one of
the drives died and I did the hot-swap thing without any down
time.

NetGear's support system is *awful*. But once you find the
support fora and figure out that you need to convince one of the
NetGear people there to take pity on you, problems get resolved.
But the *system* is just plain hopeless.

I haven't had any problems after the first couple weeks - so I
guess it's working out.
 
C

Char Jackson

Per Char Jackson:

Late-breaking After the third or fourth reboot of the WSH
box, it came up with all drives intact. My money is on the
two-port SATA card I have in there to get around the mobo's
6-drive limit.

It's always nice to see your data come back like that.
Before I started shopping for the NAS box, I was looking in to
building my own RAID-based server - but I got scared off by
various horror stories and my own assessment of my competence (or
lack thereof...).

I tried a few RAID solutions over the years and always ended up hating
them for one reason or another. I started with an Adaptec hardware
controller, had problems with it, tried a few software solutions
provided by various motherboards, and those were problematic, too.
RAID has its place, but its place isn't here with me.
After a few problems at the beginning, the NAS box has worked out
well. It only pulls 90-some watts. Early in the game one of
the drives died and I did the hot-swap thing without any down
time.

NetGear's support system is *awful*. But once you find the
support fora and figure out that you need to convince one of the
NetGear people there to take pity on you, problems get resolved.
But the *system* is just plain hopeless.

I haven't had any problems after the first couple weeks - so I
guess it's working out.

Low power consumption is getting to be a big plus these days.
 

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