Dynamic Disk Setup....

[HardD99]

Hey guys im sure this question has been asked before since it seems so simple, but i have been unable to find a simple answer

Anyways, i have a PC dedicated as my media Server, and i have been copying all my dvds to my harddrives. I took a couple drives and extended using Disk management, and dynamic disk. It works awesome so far because it super simple and it shows one drive which is the main reason i did it.... the only thing i am worried about is what happens to my data when/if a drive fails? will i lose all data on every drive? im not sure exactly how this works. Like in what fasion is the data actually put on the drives, does it fill up one drive then move to the next, or just span everything out, 1/2 file here, 1/2 file there...?

thx guys!

 

[drizzt81]

If I understand your question correctly, you have multiple drives and a single partition that is spanned across all of them using Window's dynamic disk based drive spanning?

My google-fu is weak this morning, but I would say this: If a disk fails, the outcome is undetermined. It may be possible that the spanned set is still accessible, it may not. You may be able to recover some of the data from the remained of the disks, you may not. I am under the impression that recovering data will be more complicated with dynamic disks than if you were using basic disks. At the least with basic disks, there is no inter-dependency between data on different disks, so if disk A fails, it will not affect data on disk B. This is not the case with spanned disks, where the MFT for disk B is stored partially on disk A, depending on how dynamic disks are implemented.

 

[feigned]

DD info is stored on every volume that is DD enabled, across the system. It's all GUIDs anyway.

But for spanned volumes...it writes everything sequentially, splitting files between disks as necessary. But when you lose one disk, you still have a chance to recover data.

While DD is a nice option and should theoretically work like it's designed to...I've had two horrendous experiences that I don't want to relive any time soon.

And when your DD array fails, here's how to revert a disk back to a basic disk:

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THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO IMPLIED WARRANTY FOR THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION. IF YOU MUCK UP YOUR DISK, IT'S YOUR ASS/FAULT, NOT MINE.

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To revert to a basic disk configuration from a dynamic situation, these are the steps you need to take. This is a TEMPORARY solution only.

Okay, you'll need the diskprobe utility. It's a part of the support tools on the 2000 Server disk.

You have to open up diskprobe. Select "Drives," then "Physical Drives." You have to select your drive here. "PhysicalDrive0" is your first drive, "PhysicalDrive1" is your second drive, so on and so forth. Double-click the drive. Under "Handle 0," you see your drive selected. There's a button there named "Set Active." Click it. Then click OK.

Click "Sectors" on the pull-down menu, then "Read." Click "Read" again in the window that pops up. You're Reading sectors 00 and 01. Now you should see the window populate the drive's sector information.

In row "01C0," and the third column over, you will see the data "42." Navigate to this block and change the "42" to "07." Click the "Sectors" pull down menu again. Click "Write." You will have to allow write access to the drive, so click Yes/Ok.

Click on "Drives," then "Physical Drives" again. "Close Handle" for the drive that you edited information on.

Reboot or load up the Disk Management console and import your drives. They will show up as foreign when you first view them, but that's perfectly fine.

Now get the data off of that drive, delete the partitions on said drive, and rebuild it.

That's it. Really.

 

[mikeblas]

the only thing i am worried about is what happens to my data when/if a drive fails? will i lose all data on every drive?

You'll have to restore the content of both drives from your backup.

You'd have to do this in either case. If you had two drives with the files split over them and one drive failed, you'd lose half your files. You'd have to resotre the missing half from your backup.