lotza old HD's

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Dave

I have a few old HD's (IDE Type) lying around and they still work.

I was wondering is there a unit out there that would handle these old HD's
similiar to a raid controller that I could get to handle these drives but
yet treat all of them as one hard drive?
 
I have a few old HD's (IDE Type) lying around and they still work.

I was wondering is there a unit out there that would handle these old HD's
similiar to a raid controller that I could get to handle these drives but
yet treat all of them as one hard drive?
Click to expand...


yes
if you are using windows XP
you can go into disk management and by configuring them as a dynamic
disk...you can make them all function as one drive...
of course, if one of them goes...you loose all your data...
plus...being older drives...will probably be rather slow.
it's not really worth doing...but if you like to experiment
and always back up your important data...it might be a fun
project to play with
 
I have Win 2kPro that does Dynamic Disks.... is it possible with this OS?


| On Sat, 14 May 2005 18:46:05 +0000, Dave wrote:
|
| > I have a few old HD's (IDE Type) lying around and they still work.
| >
| > I was wondering is there a unit out there that would handle these old
HD's
| > similiar to a raid controller that I could get to handle these drives
but
| > yet treat all of them as one hard drive?
|
|
| yes
| if you are using windows XP
| you can go into disk management and by configuring them as a dynamic
| disk...you can make them all function as one drive...
| of course, if one of them goes...you loose all your data...
| plus...being older drives...will probably be rather slow.
| it's not really worth doing...but if you like to experiment
| and always back up your important data...it might be a fun
| project to play with
|
 
Dave said:
I have Win 2kPro that does Dynamic Disks.... is it possible with this OS?
Click to expand...
it should also be possible with win2k
there is very little difference between XP and win2k
 
I have a few old HD's (IDE Type) lying around and they still work.

I was wondering is there a unit out there that would handle these old HD's
similiar to a raid controller that I could get to handle these drives but
yet treat all of them as one hard drive?
Click to expand...


Not just similar to a raid controller but a raid controller.
Set that controller to use the drives as a multi-drive
"span". It's an incredibly unreliable way to store data due
to the age of the drives and that multiples are needed for
the spanned logical volume.

IMO, you're far better off just buying a new drive if you
need more capacity.
 
I have about 5 drives lying around after all the other upgrades that I've
done and was wondering...

Since I still have 1 working Pent ][ - 366 and Pent ][ - 450's... I was
thinking about maybe making a Tivo box outta the old parts or MP3 storage or
something... just kinda wanna condense the 3 computers into 1 and junk the
rest/older ones.



| On Sat, 14 May 2005 18:46:05 GMT, "Dave" <[email protected]>
| wrote:
|
| >I have a few old HD's (IDE Type) lying around and they still work.
| >
| >I was wondering is there a unit out there that would handle these old
HD's
| >similiar to a raid controller that I could get to handle these drives but
| >yet treat all of them as one hard drive?
| >
| >
|
|
| Not just similar to a raid controller but a raid controller.
| Set that controller to use the drives as a multi-drive
| "span". It's an incredibly unreliable way to store data due
| to the age of the drives and that multiples are needed for
| the spanned logical volume.
|
| IMO, you're far better off just buying a new drive if you
| need more capacity.
 
I have about 5 drives lying around after all the other upgrades that I've
done and was wondering...

Since I still have 1 working Pent ][ - 366 and Pent ][ - 450's... I was
thinking about maybe making a Tivo box outta the old parts or MP3 storage or
something... just kinda wanna condense the 3 computers into 1 and junk the
rest/older ones.
Click to expand...

If you have a hardware MPEG capture card either box could
work as a TIVO, though playback might be sluggish. Either
the 366 or 450 is plenty fast enough for a home fileserver
too. The drives though will be a real performance and
reliability issue, for a mere $50 after rebate you can pick
up 120GB drives these days, IMO it's well worthwhile to do
that... If you wanted the small drives for booting and
running the OS, you could just have the large drive on a
central server (or only one of the networked systems) for
everything else.
 
Dave said:
I have a few old HD's (IDE Type) lying around and they still work.

I was wondering is there a unit out there that would handle these old HD's
similiar to a raid controller that I could get to handle these drives but
yet treat all of them as one hard drive?
Click to expand...

As you've heard from the others, this is a fun thing to do but not a
particularly practical one. At the same time, I deeply empathize with what
you have in mind.

In my household there are at least three perfectly sound computers that
don't need any particular help, but you see, I have this box of old drives.
My problem is worse than yours... the box was 24 drives ranging from 40 MB
to 2.2 GB, then I recycled most of them, and then acquired another stack,
mostly SCSI drives of about 4 GB.

So now I'm working with a sweet old computer, PII 450, in which I've mounted
one IDE drive of 4.0 GB, two SCSI drives of 4.0 GB each, and one each SCSI
and ATAPI CD-ROMs. W2K is running on the IDE drive and the others are set
up as storage. It didn't occur to me to set them up as one virtual drive;
they're just drives C:, D:, and E:.

But now the replies to your post have me thinking: maybe I should leave the
C: drive as is and configure the SCSI ones as a single virtual drive? Not
because it's a good idea, but just because I CAN?

So many ideas... so little time.
 
As you've heard from the others, this is a fun thing to do but not a
particularly practical one. At the same time, I deeply empathize with what
you have in mind.
Click to expand...
<snip>

i rebuild a lot of machines...so have dozens of "left-over" small drives
anywhere from 40 megs up to maybe 8 gigs.
i use removable drive kits and experiment with different operating systems...
and have plenty of "expendable" installations where i can test the OS or
new software etc.

i think my favorite "re-use" of a drive is a 386 that i setup with one of
my 40 meg drives!
it was too small to install win95 on...but i xcopied it over from a larger
drive...then limited the swap file to 2 megs .The machine has 16 megs of
ram so works fine.
 
As you've heard from the others, this is a fun thing to do but not a
particularly practical one. At the same time, I deeply empathize with what
you have in mind.

In my household there are at least three perfectly sound computers that
don't need any particular help, but you see, I have this box of old drives.
My problem is worse than yours... the box was 24 drives ranging from 40 MB
to 2.2 GB, then I recycled most of them, and then acquired another stack,
mostly SCSI drives of about 4 GB.

So now I'm working with a sweet old computer, PII 450, in which I've mounted
one IDE drive of 4.0 GB, two SCSI drives of 4.0 GB each, and one each SCSI
and ATAPI CD-ROMs. W2K is running on the IDE drive and the others are set
up as storage. It didn't occur to me to set them up as one virtual drive;
they're just drives C:, D:, and E:.

But now the replies to your post have me thinking: maybe I should leave the
C: drive as is and configure the SCSI ones as a single virtual drive? Not
because it's a good idea, but just because I CAN?

So many ideas... so little time.
Click to expand...

If you need them for storage I suggest you use them as
mirrored arrays. It's just to easy for one to pick up a bad
sector, or rather, to have run out of spares at that age.
 
Looks like I created a monster


<g>


Dave


Thanks for all the advice from everyone....



| | >I have a few old HD's (IDE Type) lying around and they still work.
| >
| > I was wondering is there a unit out there that would handle these old
HD's
| > similiar to a raid controller that I could get to handle these drives
but
| > yet treat all of them as one hard drive?
| >
|
| As you've heard from the others, this is a fun thing to do but not a
| particularly practical one. At the same time, I deeply empathize with
what
| you have in mind.
|
| In my household there are at least three perfectly sound computers that
| don't need any particular help, but you see, I have this box of old
drives.
| My problem is worse than yours... the box was 24 drives ranging from 40 MB
| to 2.2 GB, then I recycled most of them, and then acquired another stack,
| mostly SCSI drives of about 4 GB.
|
| So now I'm working with a sweet old computer, PII 450, in which I've
mounted
| one IDE drive of 4.0 GB, two SCSI drives of 4.0 GB each, and one each SCSI
| and ATAPI CD-ROMs. W2K is running on the IDE drive and the others are
set
| up as storage. It didn't occur to me to set them up as one virtual drive;
| they're just drives C:, D:, and E:.
|
| But now the replies to your post have me thinking: maybe I should leave
the
| C: drive as is and configure the SCSI ones as a single virtual drive? Not
| because it's a good idea, but just because I CAN?
|
| So many ideas... so little time.
|
| --
| P.
|
|
 
Dave said:
Looks like I created a monster

<g>
Click to expand...

So, lemme tell you the next chapter. I started fiddling with the box of
SCSI drives, plugging two at a time into the system and letting the SCSI
card's software check them out. Three of the IBM drives came up as 8.47 GB
each. I got busy.

Now they're all hummy and blinky. The system is still on the 4GB IDE drive,
and the CD-ROM is a slave to that. I had to take the SCSI CD-ROM out of the
system to get enough power pigtails, and the floppy came out to make
physical room for another HDD, but now I have over 25 GB of free space on
drives D, F, and G.

Win2K says I can mount one of these drives in an empty folder, and I'm
wondering about the practicality of mounting one as C:\Program Files\ . In
the end it really doesn't matter much, as this is a temporary installation,
but there's the possibility of a great learning experience in it. In about
five weeks this machine goes Linux.

I have one more computer to put together with a couple of the remaining 4GB
drives. It's the former family box that was retired two years ago when it
quit recognizing the Promise card or any drive over 2 GB. It does, however,
accept a 2940U and whatever I've connected to it so far. Unfortunately, it
has even less pigtails, just three, so it gets a 2 GB IDE drive, a 4 GB
Seagate Barracuda (keeping a spare) in two partitions, and the SCSI CD-ROM,

....all on the original W95OSR2 that came with that motherboard and case.
:-)

That done, I think I'm ready to take box after box of crap to the recyclers.
My wife will be thrilled.

monster, indeed.
 
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