Putty Posted March 21, 2015 Report Share Posted March 21, 2015 I'm down to 900gb on my 4tb. I want to buy another 4tb, but I need to extend my 900gb (e:) to include the new 4tb, same volume. What's the best way to do this...both external drives? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STEVE-O Posted March 21, 2015 Report Share Posted March 21, 2015 It might just be me but what are you trying to do exactly? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Exodus Posted March 21, 2015 Report Share Posted March 21, 2015 External or internal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STEVE-O Posted March 21, 2015 Report Share Posted March 21, 2015 External or internal They appear to all be external from what he says Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tractor Posted March 21, 2015 Report Share Posted March 21, 2015 Sounds like your trying to make a single storage space, but with multiple physical drives? I don't see that set up ever so I'm guessing if it can be done its by some third party stuff that most people wouldn't do. I'm guessing this is for some type of media library and I can understand why that would be cool to do. I'm just not sure how it would be done. Especially if your drives have existing data. Some level of RAID would probably do it, but you'd likely have to have that set up before you wrote data to any of the drives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unfunnyryan Posted March 21, 2015 Report Share Posted March 21, 2015 I'm down to 900gb on my 4tb. I want to buy another 4tb, but I need to extend my 900gb (e:) to include the new 4tb, same volume. What's the best way to do this...both external drives? RAID array, or use another system and install something such as FreeNAS or OpenMediaVault. Both have neat filesystems (XFS and ZFS) but ZFS is a tad better. Will give you as much redundancy as you want, and you can add drives on the fly. I wouldn't do hardware RAID, as you'd be dropping BIG money on a RAID card that can support 4TB drives Build a system -> put a new drive in it -> transfer old content -> put in old drive and set up as second drive on the array. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Putty Posted March 22, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2015 Yes, it's for a media server I have. I didn't expect it to grow as quickly as it has. Now I know I will need to increase the storage. The system I use I am not sure if it will read from two volumes, so I thought about buying another external 4tb and extending it to the existing drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mensan Posted March 22, 2015 Report Share Posted March 22, 2015 http://www.drobo.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmrmnhrm Posted March 23, 2015 Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 Yes, it's for a media server I have. I didn't expect it to grow as quickly as it has. Now I know I will need to increase the storage. The system I use I am not sure if it will read from two volumes, so I thought about buying another external 4tb and extending it to the existing drive. If you're running a reasonably current version of Windows (Vista/2008 or higher), or just about any *NIX for the last, ohh... 30+ years, it is possibly to mount a physical drive as a sub-folder of another drive. However, that's a rather hackish way of doing things. At this point, and since you've already admitted that your library is growing way faster than you expected, I'd recommend you get a dedicated NAS device (Eli helpfully recommended the Drobo line already), unpopulated. Since you already have a 4TB drive, I'd suggest getting a 4-bay (or larger) device, and order n-1 4TB drives (in other words, if you order a 4 bay enclosure, order three 4TB drives). When you get the pieces, put it together and configure as a RAID-5 device, then copy your entire library to the NAS. Once you've confirmed the copy was successful, install your existing 4TB drive in that last bay, then "grow" the array by adding that drive to the active array, rebuilding parity, and expanding the partition to the new array size. The practical upshot of all this is that you'll go from 4TB to 12TB of storage, PLUS it gives you the safety of being able to have any single drive failing, and not losing any data. FWIW, I actually run a RAID-6 array on my NAS (8x1TB for 6TB total storage, can tolerate two drive failures), and at least with my hardware, the repair/rebuild process was relatively pain-free Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unfunnyryan Posted March 23, 2015 Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 If you're running a reasonably current version of Windows (Vista/2008 or higher), or just about any *NIX for the last, ohh... 30+ years, it is possibly to mount a physical drive as a sub-folder of another drive. However, that's a rather hackish way of doing things. At this point, and since you've already admitted that your library is growing way faster than you expected, I'd recommend you get a dedicated NAS device (Eli helpfully recommended the Drobo line already), unpopulated. Since you already have a 4TB drive, I'd suggest getting a 4-bay (or larger) device, and order n-1 4TB drives (in other words, if you order a 4 bay enclosure, order three 4TB drives). When you get the pieces, put it together and configure as a RAID-5 device, then copy your entire library to the NAS. Once you've confirmed the copy was successful, install your existing 4TB drive in that last bay, then "grow" the array by adding that drive to the active array, rebuilding parity, and expanding the partition to the new array size. The practical upshot of all this is that you'll go from 4TB to 12TB of storage, PLUS it gives you the safety of being able to have any single drive failing, and not losing any data. FWIW, I actually run a RAID-6 array on my NAS (8x1TB for 6TB total storage, can tolerate two drive failures), and at least with my hardware, the repair/rebuild process was relatively pain-free RAID5 is just about useless with disk above 2TB, as you're pretty much guaranteed a failure during a rebuild with desktop grade drives. RAID6 is fine though (I use it on my fuck the MPAA array with 2TB disk.) I REALLY hate software and hardware raid for disk >2TB, it just is piss poor. File systems built for large volumes like ZFS do a much better job. I'm assuming drobo doesn't use that, but I guess I could be wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Putty Posted March 23, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 Thanks, guys....Sounds like I need to build a new system, install a few internal big drives in a RAID, then move data from existing to the new. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87GT Posted March 23, 2015 Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 Thanks, guys....Sounds like I need to build a new system, install a few internal big drives in a RAID, then move data from existing to the new. Only if you have extra cash to spend. I've never used a RAID setup. My gaming PC is also my media server for my other TVs. It currently has 4 hard drives and I could add 2 more. My motherboard has 6 SATA inputs. You can buy an add-on SATA card if you needed more. I haven't had a Hard Drive fail on me for many many years. The last one that did fail was PCI. SATA last a very long time at least in my experience. Set your drives to turn off after 60 minutes and you are fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unfunnyryan Posted March 23, 2015 Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 a few internal big drives in a RAID *hits with stick* bad, bad putty! http://www.freenas.org/ http://www.openmediavault.org/ Set your drives to turn off after 60 minutes and you are fine. *hits with stick* Power cycling is bad for hdd! bad trowel! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87GT Posted March 23, 2015 Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 *hits with stick* bad, bad putty! http://www.freenas.org/ http://www.openmediavault.org/ *hits with stick* Power cycling is bad for hdd! bad trowel! Yes people have said it is more wear and tear. My worry is the heat buildup from having 4 HDs stacked on each other running 24/7. I never turn off my computer. I also don't go overboard with the amount of fans in my case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmrmnhrm Posted March 23, 2015 Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 RAID5 is just about useless with disk above 2TB, as you're pretty much guaranteed a failure during a rebuild with desktop grade drives. RAID6 is fine though (I use it on my fuck the MPAA array with 2TB disk.) I REALLY hate software and hardware raid for disk >2TB, it just is piss poor. File systems built for large volumes like ZFS do a much better job. I'm assuming drobo doesn't use that, but I guess I could be wrong. That's really a question of whether you're buying desktop drives, or "better" drives. A good hardware RAID controller from LSI or Intel, together with Seagate Constellation or WD Re series drives, should not only last for years, but gracefully fail out a drive and rebuild without so much as a hiccup, especially if you're using RAID-6, or -5 with a hot spare. The question of what file system is best suited for the job is certainly one worth spending time thinking of (if you even have the option), but that's a debate for another day. Yes people have said it is more wear and tear. My worry is the heat buildup from having 4 HDs stacked on each other running 24/7. I never turn off my computer. I also don't go overboard with the amount of fans in my case. Depending on the design of your case, you may already have fans blowing directly on the hard drives, making this a non-issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87GT Posted March 23, 2015 Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 Depending on the design of your case, you may already have fans blowing directly on the hard drives, making this a non-issue. My only fans are on the CPU, GPU, and PSU. Hard drives have no air blowing over them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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