Windows Dynamic Disks

[wodger]

160GB + 160GB + 250GB = 570GB

If the hardware doesn't, Windows Dynamic disks support software RAID 0 (striping). Just tell it you want a striped disk instead of a spanned disk.

If I use RAID 0 with the disks I mentioned above, won't the total storage available on each disk be limited to the size of the smallest disk? ie.
160GB + 160GB + 160GB = 480GB ?

[wodger]

Can anyone recommend a good inexpensive PCI IDE raid controller that might be suitable? Appreciate the need for it to have its own processor...

[athomas]

If I use RAID 0 with the disks I mentioned above, won't the total storage available on each disk be limited to the size of the smallest disk? ie.
160GB + 160GB + 160GB = 480GB ?

If you stripe it, then yes, the larger 250GB disk will only use 160GB.

[Reddwarf]

Can anyone recommend a good inexpensive PCI IDE raid controller that might be suitable? Appreciate the need for it to have its own processor...

The SANDBERG ATA 133 RAID CONTROLLER is a fair controller for raid'ing IDE HD's. The performance would be better with SATA disks, but if IDE is what's at hand this is a fairly good solution.

[liteswap]

An alternative without needing extra hardware or using Windows dynamic disks is to daisychain them using NTFS hard links - Google will find you the tools.

[Reddwarf]

But that will not increase read/write speed...

[wodger]

I'm not too worried about increasing the read and write speed. The speeds are fine as they are now - the system does what I want. I'm just wondering about the overhead introduced by using Windows to span them .. and will that result in a significant loss of performance, making my current habbit of recording a couple or three channels while watching a recording etc etc, impossible?

[whurlston]

I'm just wondering about the overhead introduced by using Windows to span them .. and will that result in a significant loss of performance

It shouldn't, I've never seen any significant performance loss doing it this way. As a test, you can speed test one of the new drives. Then reformat it, spanning it with the other new drive and retest. If the results are acceptable, you can then span them with your old drive.

As liteswap suggested, you can use NTFS hard links as well. This has the added benefit of only toasting the data on the drive that fails if one does. The data on the other drives are still safe. Also makes it easier to add/remove drives.

[wodger]

Thanks for the advice and comments folks. I've decided to go with Windows spanned disks. I've got the 250GB drive and one of the 160GB drives in the set at the moment. Will add the remaining 160GB drive once I reinstall the system etc on a 40GB drive.

The comments here and this blog post helped me make up my mind (see brief comment at the end about a test):
http://www.pchelpmate.net/?p=201

Also looks like it's not impossible to get data back from the good drive in the event of a drive failure. If that ever happened it would have to be a pretty special recording to make me want to retrive it. I basically only use GBPVR as a replacement for a VCR. Albeit a hell of a good replacement.

Cheers again. Will add to this thread if I run into any trouble.

[wodger]

Hi
Unfortunately I'm now getting blue screens. The system is unusable.

While attempting to set up the box as described above I discovered limitations of the Dell PC I've got which required a slight change in plans. Basically it only has two SATA ports and one IDE channel. The original 160GB disk was the only drive present and it was a SATA drive. IDE was enabled as there was and IDE CD/DVD drive there too.

The change I made in the end was to leave the 160GB SATA drive installed in sata port 0 as the system drive; add another 160GB drive to sata port 1; add a 250GB IDE drive as the master and only device on this channel. The DVD drive was removed.

I can't remember if the BIOS was set to "Combination" or "Normal" for its sata mode - I think it was "Normal". I believe Windows XP has issues with Sata drivers (ie. it doesn't have any of its own) so I'm not quite sure if that is correct. Anyway, I found I had to set it to "Combination" to get the system to boot. The fact that it did boot makes me think it was set to combination previously. No matter.

The next change was to convert the new disks (not the original system disk) to dynamic disks and then create a spanned volume out of the new 250GB disk and the new 160GB disk. I did a full format on this new volume and loaded some gbpvr recordings on to it. I successfully reimported them, changing the settings in the recordings dump file and in the config app. I opened gbpvr and there they were. Yay.

Trouble is I am now getting blue-screens quite frequently. The culprit files in the bluescreen text have varied. I figured the ones early on weren't problems and that I had fixed them as I changed settings here and there. Certainly when gbpvr opened and the system ran fine while formatting, I thought I had it sorted.

The first happened while booting up towards the end of my mucking about with the hard drives themselves and during a boot up. The filename given was ntfs.sys. I think it was here that I changed to "combination" and it booted up fine after this.

The next appeared during formatting - culprit was tcpip.sys. I restarted and went on to successfully format the new spanned volume, so the system was up for a good hour or two at this point.

The next appeared after a period of inactivity (and after I had moved everything back to its shelf under the floor, damn it!). I can't remember what the cultprit was.

The most recent one happened a few minutes after booting up again (but I managed to VNC in and have a look around, so it's kinda weird). Filename this time is win32k.sys (I think).

I'm guessing it might have something to do with the m/b now using sata AND IDE hard drives (thought both controllers were enabled previously) AND having its spanned volume containing a disk of each type. OR possibly the new 160GB hard drive is faulty (it is not new, but the 250GB drive is brand new) and being part of a spanned volume Windows is simply having a heart attack instead of logging a useful error message for me to view later. OR maybe the m/b is faulty (I know from the Dell diags I ran last year that one of the memory channels is bad so it is not in use).

Thanks for reading this far .. are there any other possibilities people can think of? I guess I should take the 160GB drive out, convert the 250GB drive back to a simple drive, reformat it, move my recordings back onto it and see what happens from there. maybe I need to undo all the changes and see if the problem exists under the original configuration.. man, it's all time I dont' have! lol

Cheers, appreciate any thoughts.