Drive Spanning - There Must be an Easier Way

[zehd]

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.

That is one scenario with 'dynamic' disks, and not available in XP Home...

[zehd]

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.

If you get a Hardware RAID controller, with XP drivers, it will work with Home too... Home does not have any support for software RAID.

An XP Home to Pro in place upgrade is dangerous.

The redirect command referred to earlier was SUBST and was a DOS command. Incompatible with 32 bit file operations...

Unfortunately, I'm only good at pooh-poohing the ideas, not coming up with the solution. I think Video Archiver is your best bet for now....

However, this query has got me thinking, and it might be quite doable.

• Record a file into a fixed temp directory as GB-PVR currently does...
  
• A Utility watches several directories and drives to see where the space exists.
  
• Moves the file there and updates the GB-PVR database to point to the new file location....
  

That way, if one drive fills up and you add another one, the utility could start using the new one to store the files, and you would still be able to see the database entry in the recordings panel...

I think that would be very doable...

[Jeff]

I
However, this query has got me thinking, and it might be quite doable.

• Record a file into a fixed temp directory as GB-PVR currently does...
  
• A Utility watches several directories and drives to see where the space exists.
  
• Moves the file there and updates the GB-PVR database to point to the new file location....
  

That way, if one drive fills up and you add another one, the utility could start using the new one to store the files, and you would still be able to see the database entry in the recordings panel...

I think that would be very doable...

The video archive plug-in includes an archiver utility that does just that. It can be set to move miles older than a configurable amount either to the next drive in a list (if there is space) or to the drive in the list with the most free space (to balance usage). It can also be configured to fixup the GBPVR database to point to the new location when it is done. You can use the utility even if you don;t use the VA plug-in.

Jeff

[onestar]

My apologies it is the video archiver plugin I meant. It's just I only ever see videos in the menu and always refer to it as the videos plugin I didn't know it could fix up the GBPVR db to set it to the next most empty drive. That is useful and would fix the OP's problem.

[SickBoy]

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

I don't have any personal experience using this built-in functionality to 2K Pro and XP Pro (didn't realize it wasn't available in XP Home - all XP installs I have are "Pro" or "x64") but I thought (from what I read) that this wasn't technically striping, just combining 2 or more partitions into one logical volume. I could be wrong, though.

And yes, I would assume that this would destroy any existing data on the partitions.

[SuMo]

but I thought (from what I read) that this wasn't technically striping, just combining 2 or more partitions into one logical volume. I could be wrong, though.

As far as I know, drive spanning isn't the correct term for what bdgbill is trying to accomplish.
Drive (or disk) spanning is used for backing up an certain amount of data that's already there by filling up 1 cd/dvd and then the 2nd and so on till all data is written/backed up.
When creating a single volume that contains several drives,
it's striping (RAID 0)
Personally I love the RAID 5 solution, but this needs appropriate hardware.

In short:
RAID 0 = Striping
RAID 1 = Mirroring
RAID 5 = Striping with distributed parity.

And as onestar said, if in a RAID 0 config one drive fails.... all is lost. The bigger the storage the bigger the loss.

[|)uffman]

This solution is pretty easy and doesn't require and raid setup or drive spanning (which can be kinda dangerous).

I'm not sure about XP home but this works in XP pro:

Install the disk as normal and assign a drive letter. We'll call the disks "new" and "old"

Right-click My Computer - Manage.

In "Disk Managment" right click where you see the "new" drive letter - click "Change Drive Letters and Paths"

Click "Add" and then "Mount in the following empty NTFS folder"

You can then browse to a folder on your "old" drive and create a new folder there named "Video2" or something. Now you can access the new drive from that folder on the old one.

This probably only works if your old drive is NTFS btw. But you should upgrade anyways if you don't use it. I think Windows has a tool for this so you won't have to reload your OS.

It would be nice if GBPVR hid the Sysvol and Recycler directories 'cause they will show up. Does anyone know how to stop this???

This may not be the solution OP is looking for (it won't auto load balance and I can't guarantee it on XP Home), but it is an easy way to keep multiple drives organized into one master folder. And it still keeps your disks separate so if one crashes you only lose it. My pvr/server is jbod but I mount all the drives (TV, Movies, Music, etc.) into one folder and then share that on my network so my other computers just need one network drive.

[wtg]

Thanks for the tip. I didn't know you could do this with XP. I can vouch that it does work with XP Home.

[HtV]

It would be nice if GBPVR hid the Sysvol and Recycler directories 'cause they will show up. Does anyone know how to stop this???

You can hide them with an option in windows-config-folder options. There you can select the view-options e.g. to hide systemfiles etc.

[|)uffman]

You can hide them with an option in windows-config-folder options. There you can select the view-options e.g. to hide systemfiles etc.

I've tried this. GBPVR seems to ignore these settings though. This is in the default Video Library plugin btw. If I set a D:\ as a directory in the plugin it always shows RECYCLER and System Volume Information in GBPVR.