One folder for two drives?

[ertman]

Hi Folks:

I searched for some information on this, but couldn't find anything.

I just added a shiny new 200GB drive to supplement the 120GB drive I have been using with BTV for the last year or so. Works fine, as I expected.

However, what I would really like to do is have BTV treat both drives as one big folder. I don't want to have two folders, and need to manually copy recordings from one folder to the other when I am running low on space (which is what I think will happen... all recordings are getting written to "Folder 1" according to my preferences. I see no indication that it will write shows to "Folder 2" when "Folder 1" is full.)

Is this possible?

[ertman]

One last thing that would be nice if I had "one folder" across two drives... BTV would tell me how much recording space is left for the whole system, not just a specific folder!

[Eric3a]

Use Computer Management Console and stripe the 2 drives.
Eric

[flavius]

Well, FYI you need an OS that supports this - either Win 2k of XP Pro.

[not_Shorty]

don't you lose the drive's data if you stripe? What you actually want to do is span. Go into Computer Management, Drive Management, convert the old disk to a dynamic disk and then span it onto the new disk. The new disk won't get its own drive letter, the old drive will just appear to be bigger now, and you won't lose any data in the process.

edit - you can't span your system volume though, so if windows is on C: and so is your TV show folder then you'll have to use something like Partition Magic to shrink your C: down so that you can make a D: partition to hold your TV shows. Then you can span D: to the new drive.

[ertman]

Thanks for the info. It looks like I am going to have to copy all of the files off the old drive to the new drive, delete and then recreate the partition on the old drive, and then copy the files back. It won't let me extend/span the partition if it was originally created on a "basic" disk, which it was.

It takes an amazingly large amount of time to copy 90GB of files from one disk to the other :-)

[not_Shorty]

you can convert the basic disk to dynamic disk with your data in place, and then span. No need to copy anything. You just can't span your system volume.

[ertman]

The old disc has two partitions. 4GB for the OS, and then the rest for video. I converted the "basic" disc to a "dynamic" disk. After a reboot, the disc shows up as dynamic in the disk manager.

I right-click on the "video" volume (not the 4GB system volume) and select "Extend Volume". I get the error "The selected volume was originally created on a basic disk and cannot be extended. Only volumes originmally created on dynamic disks can be extended."

The MS knowledge base says to delete and recreate the volume.

Do you know a trick to avoid that? It's not obvious to me if there is one.

thanks...

[not_Shorty]

ah, I see what you're saying now. Come to think of it I think I had to do the same thing, was just so long ago I'd forgotten about that. I got that same message when I first did it. But with subsequent disks (you can span as many as you can shove in the system) it'll work without having to do anything. Sorry for the oversight.

[ertman]

No worries, thanks for the info on spanning.

Hmmm, I just noticed I posted this in the wrong forum... whoops! Good thing the admins are not in until tommorow :-)