How to organize my data on several drives

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Kryx

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Hi, I've just recently setup my HTPC/NAS and currently have 2 drives. I'm trying to figure out how best to setup the system.

In the future I plan to add more drives as well.

Should I setup drive 1 to hold movies and drive 2 to hold tv shows?
I'd love to have them both be treated as one drive, but I know that would increase the likelihood of losing it all so I won't do that.

Any suggestions?
 
There are programs you can use that pool the drives and add some form of redundency. I'm currently using drivebender.
 
There are a lot of different ways to tackle this.

Are you comfortable using Windows, Freenas (BSD), Solaris, and how much money do you want to spend doing this.

If you pick an operating system and the budget (from $0 to $$$$), this will change your options.
 
The computer is already built. Sorry I should have specified Win7.

I also already have one drive entirely full so starting from scratch isn't really an option.
 
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There are a few things that can do this, the two I've used is SnapRAID which is free, and FlexRAID which is not free. SnapRAID provides a comparison of what they and others in the software RAID field can and can't do (http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/compare.html). If you are on Windows and want storage pooling only (e.g., multipule drives showing up as a single drive), try SnapRAID. If you want some sort of protection (parity) in case of drive failure, try FlexRAID. The only thing I should note is that these are meant for static files so you typically don't want to include TV recordings since they will be constantly added and deleted.
 
SnapRAID just does snapshot RAID, it is free and open-source. FlexRAID bundles virtual drive pooling, but it is a commercial product now.
 
As long as you keep the TV and Movies in different folders, you can also just create a Windows library that points to the different folders (on different drives) and it will aggregate the results into a single list. Not the most elegant solution (something like FlexRAID is better), but it works.
 
So SnapRAID does not provide drive pooling. FlexRAID seemed like a little more than I wanted.

I ended up going with Drive Bender and it seems to do what I need it to do. It's 50% off over the next few days and I'll most likely buy it.

If anyone does drive pooling I suggest that you don't install the program on the same drive you plan to pool. :p
 
Oops, you are right and I was confused, SnapRAID does not do storage pooling. If you want a cheap and easy way of getting this done through Windows, mount the hard drive as a folder.
 
FrostBite said:
If you want a cheap and easy way of getting this done through Windows, mount the hard drive as a folder.
Click to expand...
It doesn't quite achieve the same effect as I'll have to manually control the size on both drives, but is indeed a solution.

$20 isn't a huge deal to me though.

Windows 8 apparently has the pooling feature built in.
 
Kryx said:
Hi, I've just recently setup my HTPC/NAS and currently have 2 drives. I'm trying to figure out how best to setup the system.

In the future I plan to add more drives as well.

Should I setup drive 1 to hold movies and drive 2 to hold tv shows?
I'd love to have them both be treated as one drive, but I know that would increase the likelihood of losing it all so I won't do that.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

First, if any of those files are important, back them up. Don't rely on drive redundancy, however you implement it, to protect you from all types of failures and f***ups. It will only protect you from drive failures.

Do you _need_ these to be treated as one drive? Yes, I know it's a little nicer when managing things. Like, what if you end up with 3TB of TV shows and only 1/2 TB of movies? It's easier if it all looks like one drive, but it's seldom necessary. There's nothing wrong with

2 TB drive #1:
D:\
..\Television A-G

2 TB drive #2:
E:\
..\Movies
..\Television H-Z

That doesn't take a rocket scientist to manage.
 
Windows 8 apparently has the pooling feature built in.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but you pay the price of then having to use Windows 8. :)


JJ Johnson said:
Do you _need_ these to be treated as one drive? Yes, I know it's a little nicer when managing things. Like, what if you end up with 3TB of TV shows and only 1/2 TB of movies? It's easier if it all looks like one drive, but it's seldom necessary. There's nothing wrong with

2 TB drive #1:
D:\
..\Television A-G

2 TB drive #2:
E:\
..\Movies
..\Television H-Z

That doesn't take a rocket scientist to manage.
Click to expand...

As he said, does it NEED to look like a single drive? If you are using XBMC to view your media, then you can add multiple source locations to a single folder. For example, my "Movies" section consists of multiple SMB shares. XBMC will combine all the files in to one for you so that it doesn't look like multiple directories.
 
It is more than mere convenience of having it look like one drive. I'd have to share two drives instead of one (for streaming from another computer). I'd have to setup some tv shows to download to drive e, and other to drive d - if drive d ever became full I'd have to then go back and change a bunch of those rules.

It's worth it to me.
 
Than FlexRAID for storage pooling is a good choice because once you run out of room on drive A, it'll automatically start writing data on drive B if you choose the standard configuration.
 
I'm not sure of what it does with streamed files however (like a download or a record).
 
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