Stupid question on Storage Virtualization

Lets say I have 4 - 200 GB drives on my Win 2003 server (C,D,E,F), I want to
combine all 4 of them so I can have a C drive that is 800 GB. I can do NTSF
mounts, but then i need to have sub directories, I just want one big volume.
I don't want to use any RAID card to create a RAID array at this point. So
my question is, is there any software out their that will allow me to
achieve this.

Thanks
Jay

Jay wrote:
Lets say I have 4 - 200 GB drives on my Win 2003 server (C,D,E,F), I
want to combine all 4 of them so I can have a C drive that is 800 GB.
I can do NTSF mounts, but then i need to have sub directories, I just
want one big volume. I don't want to use any RAID card to create a
RAID array at this point. So my question is, is there any software
out their that will allow me to achieve this.

With Win 2003 Server you have two options:

1. In volume manager create a software RAID 0 stripe of 800GB

2. In volume manager create a software RAID 5 stripe of 600GB


--
Nik Simpson

Nik Simpson wrote:

Lets say I have 4 - 200 GB drives on my Win 2003 server (C,D,E,F), I
want to combine all 4 of them so I can have a C drive that is 800 GB.
I can do NTSF mounts, but then i need to have sub directories, I just
want one big volume. I don't want to use any RAID card to create a
RAID array at this point. So my question is, is there any software
out their that will allow me to achieve this.


With Win 2003 Server you have two options:

1. In volume manager create a software RAID 0 stripe of 800GB

2. In volume manager create a software RAID 5 stripe of 600GB

You can do this with your BOOT partition/drive as well? And on an
existing system?

Benno... wrote:
Nik Simpson wrote:

Lets say I have 4 - 200 GB drives on my Win 2003 server (C,D,E,F), I
want to combine all 4 of them so I can have a C drive that is 800
GB. I can do NTSF mounts, but then i need to have sub directories,
I just want one big volume. I don't want to use any RAID card to
create a RAID array at this point. So my question is, is there any
software out their that will allow me to achieve this.


With Win 2003 Server you have two options:

1. In volume manager create a software RAID 0 stripe of 800GB

2. In volume manager create a software RAID 5 stripe of 600GB

You can do this with your BOOT partition/drive as well? And on an
existing system?

With an existing filesystem, I think the best you could do is create a
volume set, but you should be able to check in the Help for the Volume
manager.


--
Nik Simpson

I will try this, basically I got 4 External Firewire drives, right now the
best I could do is do a NTFS mount since I have a boot drive. The next
quesiton will be if I were to remove the FW drives and plug into another
box, can the same RAID-0 be maintained.

Jay



"Nik Simpson" wrote in message
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Benno... wrote:
Nik Simpson wrote:

Lets say I have 4 - 200 GB drives on my Win 2003 server (C,D,E,F), I
want to combine all 4 of them so I can have a C drive that is 800
GB. I can do NTSF mounts, but then i need to have sub directories,
I just want one big volume. I don't want to use any RAID card to
create a RAID array at this point. So my question is, is there any
software out their that will allow me to achieve this.


With Win 2003 Server you have two options:

1. In volume manager create a software RAID 0 stripe of 800GB

2. In volume manager create a software RAID 5 stripe of 600GB

You can do this with your BOOT partition/drive as well? And on an
existing system?

With an existing filesystem, I think the best you could do is create a
volume set, but you should be able to check in the Help for the Volume
manager.


--
Nik Simpson

Jay wrote:
I will try this, basically I got 4 External Firewire drives, right
now the best I could do is do a NTFS mount since I have a boot drive.
The next quesiton will be if I were to remove the FW drives and plug
into another box, can the same RAID-0 be maintained.

I beleive you can import a RAID set from one system to another, the
information about the "set" is stored on the drives for just this reason.


--
Nik Simpson

On Mon, 17 May 2004 03:29:20 GMT, "Jay" wrote:

Lets say I have 4 - 200 GB drives on my Win 2003 server (C,D,E,F), I want to
combine all 4 of them so I can have a C drive that is 800 GB. I can do NTSF
mounts, but then i need to have sub directories, I just want one big volume.
I don't want to use any RAID card to create a RAID array at this point. So
my question is, is there any software out their that will allow me to
achieve this.

Yup. IIRC, there's a command that's standard on Win 2003 called
"diskraid"....

There are likely restrictions on which disks it will work with (e.g.
the earlier Win2000 equivalent refused to work with USB or Firewire
disks, because it considered them removable).

Jay

Malc.

On Mon, 17 May 2004 11:52:24 -0400, "Nik Simpson"
wrote:

Jay wrote:
I will try this, basically I got 4 External Firewire drives, right
now the best I could do is do a NTFS mount since I have a boot drive.
The next quesiton will be if I were to remove the FW drives and plug
into another box, can the same RAID-0 be maintained.

I beleive you can import a RAID set from one system to another, the
information about the "set" is stored on the drives for just this reason.

The RAID set info is very important and you can backup the info from
Windows volume manager. All you need is a floppy to export the volume
set info and then you just take it with you where ever you firewire
drives go.

the bug