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I have a few questions about spanning two hard drives. First let me tell you the basics about what I have with my htpc (forgive me if this question belongs in the htpc section but I dont believe it is relevant).
I have Windows 7 installed on an SSD so we do not have to worry about any information pertaining to GPT and booting windows. I have one WD 2TB hard drive (MBR) full of recordings and other data. Because this drive is now full, I purchased a new WD 3TB drive which I am in the process of putting in the PC. From my understanding, only one drive can be selected as the recording storage for Windows Media Center so I need to combine these two drives. I've decided to span the two using windows disk management in lieu of any form of RAID and I have a few questions that I cant seem to find direct answers to, though I have found quite a bit of information on the subject.
As a side question that I am still researching, which gave me the time to post my other questions, my new 3TB drive is a WD Red drive. I do not want to dilute any answers or divert the topic away from my above questions as this one is not my #1 priority yet, but this 3TB drive is showing up in BIOS/Windows as 750 or so GB and I cannot figure out why. I am running diagnostic tests on it at the moment and my next step is to in fact format it as GPT (as I have not formatted it yet) to see if it then gets recognized as 3TB. If anyone has any insight to this problem, please let me know.
Thank you very much in advance.
I have Windows 7 installed on an SSD so we do not have to worry about any information pertaining to GPT and booting windows. I have one WD 2TB hard drive (MBR) full of recordings and other data. Because this drive is now full, I purchased a new WD 3TB drive which I am in the process of putting in the PC. From my understanding, only one drive can be selected as the recording storage for Windows Media Center so I need to combine these two drives. I've decided to span the two using windows disk management in lieu of any form of RAID and I have a few questions that I cant seem to find direct answers to, though I have found quite a bit of information on the subject.
- I know you usually create a new spanned volume from two empty/fresh disks. However, in disk management, I have the option to "extend" the old 2TB drive with the new unallocated 3TB drive. Does this create a "spanned" volume between the two? Will this turn both of them into dynamic disks?
- If the above will not work, or is the incorrect way to achieve my goal, I would like to confirm that I must delete my existing volume (after backup of course), convert it to a dynamic volume and then use the "new spanned volume" wizard that I have seen others do.
- I will be formatting the new 3TB drive as GPT to get all 3TB of usage. Is it possible to span an MBR drive with a GPT drive or must they both be the same? I know the basic details between the two but do not have any real world experience with GPT.
As a side question that I am still researching, which gave me the time to post my other questions, my new 3TB drive is a WD Red drive. I do not want to dilute any answers or divert the topic away from my above questions as this one is not my #1 priority yet, but this 3TB drive is showing up in BIOS/Windows as 750 or so GB and I cannot figure out why. I am running diagnostic tests on it at the moment and my next step is to in fact format it as GPT (as I have not formatted it yet) to see if it then gets recognized as 3TB. If anyone has any insight to this problem, please let me know.
Thank you very much in advance.