7 replies to this topic

[Dean1M]

I need to create some more space on a secondary HTPC. I have one 60GB SSD, one 1TB 7200RPM and two 500GB 7200RPM.
The mobo has 4 SATA and 1 eSATA. I need one SATA for the burner. Noise and power are not a big concern.

What I'd like to do is use the SSD for the OS and use the rest for recording. I'm thinking of using RAID 0
with the three 7200RPM drives. I understand this will limit me to 1.5TB and leave an unused 500GB on the
largest drive.

Is there a better way to do it. Data integrity is pretty much irrelevant as any important recordings get
archived to the NAS.

I want to use this box for experimenting, however at present WAF dictates that it be identical in every
respect to the main HTPC from the end users point of view.

Deano

[rdub]

Hi Deano, if your motherboard supports it, I would go with JBOD if redundancy isn't important. JBOD will allow you to use the 2TB.

Rdub.

[logifuse]

JBOD leaves them as individual drives though, doesn't it?

A software RAID solution is the go. Drive Bender might be worth a look: http://www.drivebender.com/ - works like Drive Extender in WHS1.

Justin

[Dean1M]

Thanks for that, I'm not sure about JBOD, I'm fairly sure my mobo would support it.

I went to the drivebender site. They are about to release version 2 so are selling out of version 1.3 for half price($20). Seemed like too good an offer to refuse.

Thanks for your help.

Deano

[WarrenH]

Raid 0

[logifuse]

Raid 0

Limited to multiples of the smallest drive in the set, so only half of the 1TB drive would be used.

Justin

[rdub]

Yeah, sorry, JBOD was the wrong term, I meant something along the lines of concatenated drives which you can do within windows 7. In W7 its called a spanned dynamic drive and as far as I know you can use all available space on diffenrent sized disks with no redundancy.

Rdub.

[logifuse]

Good one. I hadn't realised that spanned volumes were available in non-server versions of Windows.

Justin