Guest Posted September 3, 2000 I've got three hard drives... two of which I would like to merge so that they appear and are used as one. Can this be done, and if so, how do I do it? ------------------ ********************************************** ---Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.--- ********************************************** Pentium II 450@504 4.5X112 128MB PC100 SDRAM Diamond Viper V770 Ultra Sound Blaster Live! Value Seagate 13.6 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66 Western Digital 13.4 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66 Quantum 8.3 Gig 36X Acer CD Rom Viewsonic PS790 19" Sweet as Heck Monitor 3Com NIC Lexmark 5700 Printer ********************************************** Share this post Link to post
DocSilly 0 Posted September 3, 2000 It can be done, it's called software RAID which is supported by NT4 and Win2000. The change from regular drives to software RAID differs between NT4 and Win2000, so let us know what OS you're using. btw, drives in a software RAID can not be accessed from Win9x and so. Share this post Link to post
Guest Posted September 3, 2000 I'm running Windows 2000 Professional. So can this be done without my having to buy any RAID adapters or anything? ------------------ ********************************************** ---Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.--- ********************************************** Pentium II 450@504 4.5X112 128MB PC100 SDRAM Diamond Viper V770 Ultra Sound Blaster Live! Value Seagate 13.6 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66 Western Digital 13.4 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66 Quantum 8.3 Gig 36X Acer CD Rom Viewsonic PS790 19" Sweet as Heck Monitor 3Com NIC Lexmark 5700 Printer ********************************************** Share this post Link to post
clutch 1 Posted September 3, 2000 While you could have software RAID (which does not require special hardware and will work with IDE and SCSI) and volume set options in NT/Win2K, I'm afraid that they are only available in the server variants of both operating systems. I know that this was the case with NT. Sorry. ------------------ Regards, clutch Share this post Link to post
Guest Posted September 3, 2000 Well, I don't have Server for my personal PC, but I'm in college and in some advanced networking classes. We have NT4 Server and Win2k Server on several of the machines down there in the lab... So, if you tell me how to do it in Server, that would be just as good. I can try it out down in the lab. Thx ------------------ ********************************************** ---Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.--- ********************************************** Pentium II 450@504 4.5X112 128MB PC100 SDRAM Diamond Viper V770 Ultra Sound Blaster Live! Value Seagate 13.6 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66 Western Digital 13.4 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66 Quantum 8.3 Gig 36X Acer CD Rom Viewsonic PS790 19" Sweet as Heck Monitor 3Com NIC Lexmark 5700 Printer ********************************************** Share this post Link to post
DocSilly 0 Posted September 3, 2000 lemme take a lookie into my magic bookmarks .... me thinks this one should do the job. Share this post Link to post
Guest Posted September 3, 2000 Thanx for the link.... that answers my question perfectly. However, it brings up another question... Will I lose the data that is currently on the drives when I merge them? ------------------ ********************************************** ---Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.--- ********************************************** Pentium II 450@504 4.5X112 128MB PC100 SDRAM Diamond Viper V770 Ultra Sound Blaster Live! Value Seagate 13.6 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66 Western Digital 13.4 Gig 7200RPM ATA/66 Quantum 8.3 Gig 36X Acer CD Rom Viewsonic PS790 19" Sweet as Heck Monitor 3Com NIC Lexmark 5700 Printer ********************************************** Share this post Link to post
DocSilly 0 Posted September 4, 2000 most definetly ! backup your harddrives before you change their status to dynamic. Share this post Link to post
clutch 1 Posted September 4, 2000 I hope that you read this before you switch to dynamic disks. The idea is really cool, however some software will REALLY act screwy with this system. Now, while I haven't seen software have issues between FAT, FAT32, and NTFS (SHS has though in some games) I can tell you that version 4x (not 4.5) has MAJOR issues with dynamic disks. It reports that every file is either corrupt or non-readable. In addition, Diskeeper 5.x wouldn't work with Dynamic Disks either, even though they provide a "lite" version with Win2K. Also, if the server crashes, it can take a LONG time to fully settle down after a reboot. For me, it took like 45 minutes using 3 4.3GB IDE drives in stripe set w/ parity config (RAID5-ish). Just things to look into when setting up your own server. ------------------ Regards, clutch Share this post Link to post
