Reflux Posted December 18, 2006 Share Posted December 18, 2006 I got quite a bit of questions here. First off can you raid external harddrives? I hear alot of raid 0 how if one drive fails the other drive will not work, but does raid 0 shorten the life of the harddrive? Lastly if i cant raid my external harddrives is there another way to make the two harddrives appear as one drive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted December 18, 2006 Share Posted December 18, 2006 You could software RAID external hard drives together, or you could get a external hardware RAID controller. Why do you want to RAID 0 external hard drives? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reflux Posted December 18, 2006 Author Share Posted December 18, 2006 Because its annoying to have two drives on my computer. I use my external hds for movies, shows, ect and i just find it annoying to sort the media between drives. I just want my 2 physical drives to show up as 1 drive is there any alternative to raid? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted December 18, 2006 Share Posted December 18, 2006 You could always mount one of the volume to a directory on the other hard drive. Although, RAIDing external hard drives that are not hardware RAIDed seems like a horrific idea. It seems to me (but I might be wrong) that should one of the drives accidentally stop working (USB becomes unplugged, or power suddenly stops working on one of them) you just lost data on both of them (probably just the file you where currently writing). If you seriously want to RAID external hard drives you really should get a hardware controller, I have never seen a external hardware controller sold by it's self. However you can buy enclosures (which makes sense because you want some where to put the drives) that have hardware controllers built in, but they usually come with drives already installed for you. Here is one I found: http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/in...duct_uid=116823 That particular one doesn't appear to support RAID 1, however other models do support it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooper Posted December 18, 2006 Share Posted December 18, 2006 RAID0 doesn't shorten the life of a harddisk. It's just that you need both drives to be intact to be able to read the data on them. So normally there's a slim chance of X percent that your harddrive dies today. Suddenly that's become X percent that that drive dies today PLUS Y percent that the other drive dies today. In that sense a RAID0 is less reliable than a single drive, or any of the other existing RAID forms. If that's a risk you can live with, by all means RAID0 the drives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingwray Posted December 18, 2006 Share Posted December 18, 2006 You can't RAID external harddrives which are USB or FIrewire, unless someone was to produce a 'RAID' car with these two interfaces. If you had eSata then it would be easy. Best bet its to back up once a week onto the second drive and then in between backups store the second drive in a very safe place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reflux Posted December 18, 2006 Author Share Posted December 18, 2006 You could always mount one of the volume to a directory on the other hard drive. could you explain mounting one of the volumes to a directory on the other hard drive better? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted December 18, 2006 Share Posted December 18, 2006 NTFS has this feature that's sole purpose is to get around the limit of 26 volumes. If you open disk management, and right click on the volume you wish to mount in side a directory and click "Change drive letter and paths". In that menu you should be able to mount it as a directory on another drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted December 18, 2006 Share Posted December 18, 2006 You can't RAID external harddrives which are USB or FIrewire, unless someone was to produce a 'RAID' car with these two interfaces.If you had eSata then it would be easy. Best bet its to back up once a week onto the second drive and then in between backups store the second drive in a very safe place. Yeah, you can have a USB raid that works, its just a bit of a hack. See here: http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-ga...raid-5-solution Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
debianuser Posted December 24, 2006 Share Posted December 24, 2006 You can't RAID external harddrives which are USB or FIrewire, unless someone was to produce a 'RAID' car with these two interfaces.If you had eSata then it would be easy. Best bet its to back up once a week onto the second drive and then in between backups store the second drive in a very safe place. Yeah, you can have a USB raid that works, its just a bit of a hack. See here: http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-ga...raid-5-solution We've got some LACIE external USB disk and you can raid them, using their software... not sure how it works, but it does Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reflux Posted December 24, 2006 Author Share Posted December 24, 2006 I finally tried mounting the volumes and from what i can tell it looks like just a shortcut to the other drive. Is there any difference i should take note of? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted December 24, 2006 Share Posted December 24, 2006 none, it's sole purpose is to get around the 26 (24 minus A and B) volume limit Microsoft implemented (it's not a design flaw, it's a feature!). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooper Posted December 24, 2006 Share Posted December 24, 2006 "26 should be enough for anybody" wasn't it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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