Drive Spanning - There Must be an Easier Way

[bdgbill]

I have finally gotten to the point where I need to find something to delete before I can record anything to my 200 GB recordings drive.

I always just assumed that I would be able to add another drive, then somehow join the 2 together to appear as one drive.

I have spent the last hour or so searching the forum for drive spanning and found that it's not easy at all. My PVR is running XP Home so changing the drives to dynamic is not an option.

A couple of posts mention a utility called "Junction Link Magic" but as far as I can tell this just redirects any reads or writes from one folder to another folder that I specify. Wouldn't this mean that my first recordings drive would never be used?

I know there are some work arounds regarding the my videos plugin or manually moving older videos to another location but I really want just a very big recordings folder.

Has anyone done this succesfully with XP Home?

[dark_half]

This was a request I made this summer to sub(http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=18009). I think Video Archive pugin will give you this but I am hoping that at some time this will be included into the default Video plugin.

[FirstTeamOPS]

If that plugin is not what you're looking for and are looking for one large hard drive spanned over two separate hard drives for any kind of data, I've never played with it much but you could try setting them up in a RAID configuration. I think (could be wrong) RAID 0 sets up the disks as one big hard drive. RAID 1 is mirroring which doesn't sound like what you're looking for.

Either way, you need a motherboard that has a RAID controller or need to purchase a RAID expansion card if your motherboard doesn't support it.

That's the best way I know.

[SuMo]

In this case RAID isn't an option for what I understand, you want to keep your data on the 200GB drive and extend it with another 200GB (or more) so you'll en up with one 400GB drive.
When using a RAID solution all data will be erased.
I've "played" with partition magic but aa far as I know there's no option to virtually join two or more drives to appear as one.
Sorry I can't help you any further.

[SickBoy]

I thought Win2K/XP had ways to combine 2 drives into one logical volume (using software only).... ?

Of course, if one of those drives has to be a system drive, I have no idea how you'd accomplish that.

I do know that there's a way to mount a disk as a subfolder on another disk (much like how mounting works in Linux) but that doesn't help with GBPVR specifically, since recordings can only go in one directory.

[mmatheny]

Well, if you had a modern motherboard with RAID, you could use JBOD RAID (just a bunch of disks <- for real, that's what it stands for!). It will span across multiple disks. Problem is, you would probably have to destroy the data on one to set them up.

[SuMo]

I thought Win2K/XP had ways to combine 2 drives into one logical volume (using software only).... ?

true, but this is a RAID 0 and erases all data from the drives that are used

[bdgbill]

I should have been more clear.

The new drive would be my 3rd in the system.

It's no big deal if I have to erase my disks to set this up. I have a little 20 Gig HD with Windows and GBPVR. I just have to find a place to temporarily store my recordings while setting up the new disc.

I will look into RAID 0.

Anybody have any experience with this "Junction Magic" product?

[onestar]

I have 3 now 4 drives I use for recordings and dvds. I did think about going for the dynamic or raid options, but it seems like if one drive fails, you lose all data. So instead I just have the video plugin set to pick up all four drives. Granted current recordings can only go on one - which I change occasionally. I set archives to go the other, so I can shift recordings if I need to. DVDs are now going on another one. And one is full recordings previously made . Its not ideal e.g. I do monitor the drives every so often (once every 3 months!), but its not so inconvenient either.

[SuicideDog]

You could try all those things.. but I think xp home it also going to have very limited raid functions.. and you may have a real hard time finding drivers for xp home. It would be better if you bite the bullet and just get a copy of xp and do a in-place upgrade which is pretty painless. You can find xp for about $80 on the web. http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_attri...skd=1/rd=1

If you upgrade it would prolly solve any other headaches you have with xp home also.