Multiple HD's to read as one?

[eGoCeNTRoNiX]

Hey All,

I've got a question, don't know if it's possible or not. I don't know much about raid, nor do I care to go that route. But I seem to remember when my dad bought his first PC 386SX (remember the days?) that he had bought a 1gb HD and had combined it with the original HD 100MB to make ONE HD? I know he did a Bios Overlay as older computers couldn't recognize anything over ?MB. But does my memory serve me right, or is my RAM all messed up? Can this still be done if I am right? For instance combining a 2.1gb and a 10gb together to read as one drive? Or is it just software that does this? Like I said, may be a stupid question, but one I thought I'd ask. eGo

[b-man1]

NT, 2k, and XP all have the option to add free space to a volume set, which is a type of partition. search in Help for volumes and volume sets and you'll see how to create them.

[eGoCeNTRoNiX]

Hey b-man. Thanx for that bit of info. I will definatly look into that tonight. =) Anyone else have any ideas or opinions, please keep them coming!!

[TruckStuff]

Might I ask what you have against RAID? Besides the fact that the drives need to be identical for best performance?

[eGoCeNTRoNiX]

Never said I had anything against raid. It was a question specific to Older hardware. I have a bunch of P200 systems I'm giving to friends and was curious about the possibilities. eGo

[Karchiveur]

Well... i'v being pondering them same idea and I was looking it up on the net but found nothing

[eGoCeNTRoNiX]

The whole concept of Raid sounds very nice, but it's not exactly what I'm asking about. I think that Kar is the only one who's really looking for the same thing I am. Like I said, my memmory may fail me, but I could swear (spell check lol) that my father hooked the drives together to read as one, not one as a master and one as slave. But who knows.. I was 13 then, that was almost 10 years ago. I am looking into doing the whole raid thing with two SeaGate 80gb drives. But I don't know anything about it. I know that you can mirror or stripe the arrays, but how does that affect the drives? How do you build an array? I've been out of the loop for a while so any help is appreciated! And if anyone else figures out how to take two drives and hook them together so that they are one lemme know. lol.. eGo

[DocSilly]

http://arstechnica.com/paedia/r/raid-1.html
There's all you need to know about RAID.

I think that what you remember isn't a real RAID, it is something called JBOD.

JBOD (for "just a bunch of disks," or sometimes "just a bunch of drives") is a derogatory term - the official term is "spanning" - used to refer to a computer's hard disks that haven't been configured according to the RAID (for "redundant array of independent disks") system to increase fault tolerance and improve data access performance.

The RAID system stores the same data redundantly on multiple disks that nevertheless appear to the operating system as a single disk. Although, JBOD also makes the disks appear to be a single one, it accomplishes that by combining the drives into one larger logical one. JBOD doesn't deliver any advantages over using separate disks independently and doesn't provide any of the fault tolerance or performance benefits of RAID.

More info at http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/rai ... s/jbod.htm

[eGoCeNTRoNiX]

essentially, the only two Raid formats tha benefit home users to any great avail would be Raid 0 and Raid 1, Raid one being for someone who might operate a business on a home computer to prevent the constant backing up of files, and Raid 0 for someone like me, who wants more space and faster speeds. Right? or Wrong? Or do you gain any space at all? From reading further, it appears to me that if you combine 2 80gb HD you still only ahve 80gb not 160gb? Is that right? Also, is it possible to just buy an IDE controller card to enable more IDE devices to be used in one box? Or has that technology become obselete? Just my curiousities.. TIA to all for your patience, understanding and explanations..

[Busby]

2 80GB drives in a RAID1 array would yield 80GB of usable space and 80GB of parity/mirror information.
2 80GB drives in a RAID0 array would yield 160GB of usable space and 0GB of parity/mirror information.

RAID0 can increase the perceived speed of a disk performance. RAID1 provides some fault tolerance in case of a disk crash (HD1 fails, u RMA HD1 and data on HD2 can rebuild the array or vice versa).

IDE controller cards are still around and still are great for those of us that love to have DVD, CD-ROMS, CD-RWs, DVD-Rs, Zip drives, etc. all on the IDE bus along with multiple harddrives. Most motherboards have support for 4 total devices. Well if you have 2 harddrives and then a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, and CD-RW, you either choose to lose one device (which the DVD-ROM easily replaces a CD-ROM) or buy a controller card for harddrives. Promise makes some good IDE controllers. All RAID controllers can double as standard IDE controllers but ATAPI devices do not perform that well or won't even work on some controllers.

[eGoCeNTRoNiX]

Hey Bus.. Thanx.. Much appreciated. I have a better grasp on it now. Another question, do you notice any difference in boot times between raid and the addtion of ide card? Hope I'm not buggin' you guys.. eGo

[Busby]

My RAID controller and my RAID array (which I boot from) actually increase Windows load times but it does add a few second delay for the BIOS to detect the drives.

[smb]

Actually there use to be a program called Big Disk that would make multiple disks in to one large partitioned area. I don't know if it's still available tho.