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I just got a new HD in my system and I have both m,y old one and my new one in at the same time and they both work fine but they are just 2 seperate drives, my old one is NTFS and my new one is FAT32 and I have this other HD showed up im 'My computer' called 'SYSTEM_SAVE' and that appeared after I installed this new HD. so how exactly do I stripe all of these together as if it were one drive? When I got the new HD it was already set as a slave so I just had to connect it.
You'll either need software RAID (dunno if XP likes that), or a RAID controller card which you attach the drives to, unless your motherboard has built in RAID support.
Of course, both drives must be exactly identical in size and model first, otherwise it won't work :p
Uhh no my old HD is a total of 6.2 gigs while my new one is about 20. Is it possible for me to do anything with them besides use them as 2 seperates.
I guess you could always reformat both disks completely and reinstall XP and tell it to use them both as dynamic disks so you can have just one partition across them both. Dunno how good dynamic disks are though, and it certainly would not give the performance that you get with striping.
Cripes, cl_out, there is a *much* easier answer.
Format your new hard drive as NTFS. Make a new folder on your old hard drive. Go into Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management, and select your new hard drive (Probably Disk 1). Right-click your NTFS drive (it should say something like NEW_VOLUME (D:)), and select "Change Drive Letters and Paths." Click "Add" and select "Mount in the following empty NTFS folder" and point it at the folder you made on your C:. Now, if you like, you can remove the D: drive letter. Your new disk will appear in the empty folder you created. (Try it, if you want--add the mount point, don't delete the d:, and then create a text file on d:. Navigate to your folder on C:, and the new text file will appear)
Also, watch your terminology: Disk Striping is the name of an existing technology that was introduced with Windows 2000. In a striped volume, data is written evenly across all physical disks, which appear as a single drive letter on your computer. Since two hard disk controllers are in use instead of just one, this creates a disk with faster read/write access time. Your striped set will contain all of the space from both disks
HOWEVER, there are a few caveats to keep in mind. First of all, you cannot convert existing disks to a striped set. You would have to format both disks, and install XP on its own partition, and then create a striped set from free, unpartitioned space on both of your other disks.
SECONDLY, since data must be written evenly across multiple physical disks, the maximum size of the striped set is equal to double the free space on your smallest disk (Assuming you install XP Pro on a partition on your 20-GB disk, this means you can use your 6.2 GB disk plus a 6.2 GB partition on the 20 GB disk for a MAXIMUM partition size of 12.4 GB. And you'd still have at least two drive letters to deal with (assuming that your XP Pro partition was 13.8 GB, with the other 6.2 GB going to the stripe set)
LASTLY, striped sets exist for performance reasons only--There is no fault-tolerance whatsoever. If either one of your hard disks fails, all of the data on the entire striped set will be irrevocably lost. This is why striped sets are recommended ONLY for server partitions which are backed up every single night. (Not necessarily full backups, as long as a proper incremental/differential backup strategy is maintained)
Your best bet is to mount the new disk in a folder under your old disk. Keep in mind that if you mount your new disk in c:\newdisk\ and try to save something to c:\games\, it will still write to the old disk--you won't be using the space on your second disk unless you save files to c:\newdisk. (In other words, it doesn't make the volume itself larger--Even if c:\newdisk is completely empty, your c:\ will be full once it reaches the 6.2 GB mark.
Format your new hard drive as NTFS. Make a new folder on your old hard drive. Go into Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management, and select your new hard drive (Probably Disk 1). Right-click your NTFS drive (it should say something like NEW_VOLUME (D), and select "Change Drive Letters and Paths." Click "Add" and select "Mount in the following empty NTFS folder" and point it at the folder you made on your C:. Now, if you like, you can remove the D: drive letter. Your new disk will appear in the empty folder you created. (Try it, if you want--add the mount point, don't delete the d:, and then create a text file on d:. Navigate to your folder on C:, and the new text file will appear) --Bleys
So all that crap is the Windows equivalent of mount /dev/hdb1, eh? Clearly MS should've added about 14 more levels of menus to click through.
mount /dev/hdb1 would produce an error message. What you'd want would be something like "mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows" n'est-ce pas?
And yes, it always takes longer to describe how to do something in a GUI, because you have to describe what to do, not just say what to type. For non-computer-geek users, the GUI is both more intuitive and easier to handle than any command-line application. Hell, even a geek like me wishes there were *more* GUI applications. I would have loved to be able to drag and drop an OU from one domain to another in Active Directory instead of typing out the simple, easy-to-remember command line "movetree /start /s vicious.secretsquirrel.com /d tessa.cpi.secretsquirrel.com /sdn OU=IS,DC=secretsquirrel,DC=com /rdn OU=IS,DC=cpi,DC=secretsquirrel,DC=com /u mhuculak /p *
Especially since if you put the "com" in anything but all lower-case--or make a typo--the command fails, producing a movetree.err file that's completely filled with gibberish.
Yes, of course, typo-ridden, cryptic command lines are much easier for everybody to deal with, not just hardcore, DOS-nostalgic, chest-thumping Linux geeks. Especially since you can easily expect everyone to remember the full syntax of about 32 trillion different commands, that's much easier than a GUI that's filled from top to bottom with visual cues to help those who can't memorize the information stored in such volumes as "Linux System Administration: A Beginner's Guide" (639 pages) or "Linux Secrets" (974 pages)
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Linux is a very nice toy for geeks. It is most emphatically not for everyone. But of course, it'll be ignored again, because it's trendy and popular to slam Microsoft for the unforgivable crime of being succesful
EDIT: Yeah, I know I used to be pretty pro-Linux, too. Know what happened to change that? I got an education. First, I blindly accepted what Microsoft told me because I was a DOS user and it's all I knew. Then, I blindly accepted everything that the Linux community told me because I saw some ways in which Linux was better. Then I got an education and started looking at things for myself, and the FACTS are that Microsoft is better in some things and Linux in others, and it's almost a duty to debunk the FUD being spread by both sides.
Whoa hold on guys one step at a time, will formating my new drive to NTFS erase all of my good stuff, Unreal Tourney, Gamespy arcade, Half-Life.
mount /dev/hdb1 works if you have /dev/hdb1 in your fstab. Or right-click a drive icon in KDE and choose "mount" if you like GUIs.
But of course, it'll be ignored again, because it's trendy and popular to slam Microsoft for the unforgivable crime of being succesful. --Bleys
Close enough. :) I disliked them long before I knew it was trendy though, and being popular doesn't have anything to do with it.
Whoa hold on guys one step at a time, will formating my new drive to NTFS erase all of my good stuff, Unreal Tourney, Gamespy arcade, Half-Life. --Joel
Formatting = delting all data from a drive. Back up any drive you plan to format so you can restore your data later.
No, you can do a non-destructive conversion of your hard disk to NTFS. Unfortunately, for this, you MUST use a command-line, whether that's your cup of tea or not.
To get to the command line, click the start menu, select "run," and type "cmd"
Now, in the DOS box that pops up, type "convert d: /fs:ntfs" (assuming that d: is the drive letter of your fat32 drive; if it's not, replace it with e: or f: or z: or whatever drive letter is appropriate)
You may have to reboot your computer, but if Windows isn't using that drive (as seems very likely), it'll just do a non-destructive conversion right away.
That quick, wow, Im trying that when I get home.
Partition Magic always worked fine for me, but I'm fairly sure that for the conversion part (fat32->ntfs) it actually calls the built-in command that Bleys just gave.