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Adding an additional 3TB drive to an existing volume in Windows 7?

post #1 of 13
11/10/12 at 12:54am
Thread Starter 
I am running out of space on my D: volume 3TB drive and I want to add an additional 3TB drive to extend this volume. I know 3TB drives can be tricky. How can I use disk management to extend my D: partition/volume with my 2nd 3TB drive?

I have the volume set up as "simple volume" and used GPT to get the full 3TB.
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post #2 of 13
11/10/12 at 6:52am
Not an answer specifically but: why extend D: vs adding the new 3TB as the E: drive? I'm struggling with similar and am, for the time being, running C: SSD for OS, D: and E: for video content. Media Browser is simply mapped to each and works great w/o having to extend D:

Would be curious if strategically extending would buy me something I'm missing as Im always open to something new.
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post #3 of 13
11/10/12 at 12:02pm
You would need to convert both disks to dynamic disks then create a spanned partition on both drives. I'm not sure if you can do that non-destructively.
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post #4 of 13
11/10/12 at 1:33pm
Another option is RAID0...

I'm pretty sure you could migrate data from an existing drive into a RAID array...
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post #5 of 13
11/10/12 at 3:59pm
Thread Starter 
Thats interesting... i thought this could be done "on the fly" easily. I guess it's more complicated then I originally thought. So, if you don't have a server, what is the common way to use just a bunch of drives ("JABOD's") say on a new build? Obviously I'm not the only one that has filled up more then one drive on his HTPC and doesnt use a NAS. Do you just map multiple folders from multiple volumes to your one library (such as your "Movies" library)?
Quote:
Originally Posted by spidermaker View Post

Not an answer specifically but: why extend D: vs adding the new 3TB as the E: drive? I'm struggling with similar and am, for the time being, running C: SSD for OS, D: and E: for video content. Media Browser is simply mapped to each and works great w/o having to extend D:
Would be curious if strategically extending would buy me something I'm missing as Im always open to something new.

I'm already using E: for recorded TV. And sometimes I will delete and add other media to my d: drive so that's why I just wanted to let the PC choose where to put these files on one single volume (spread across multiple disks) rather having to manually know what is on each volume and guess how much room I have on D: to add media to it or to my other new volume. So basically I want to use D: as my NAS but attached locally and not on the main network... If that makes any sense...
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post #6 of 13
11/10/12 at 4:24pm
Windows 8, if you are willing to upgrade, can offer you this 'on the fly' storage expansion with a feature called 'Storage Spaces'. You start by creating a virtual storage space much larger than your physical drives. As you filling up your physical drives, you can add new drives to the space without changing anything. So you basically has an infinite virtual parition that can be physically expanded at any time.
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post #7 of 13
11/10/12 at 4:34pm
I'm not understanding why your not just adding the drive and moving on.

You want it to be a single drive ? And not two separate drives ?

Flexraid ?
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post #8 of 13
11/10/12 at 5:21pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mfusick View Post

I'm not understanding why your not just adding the drive and moving on.
You want it to be a single drive ? And not two separate drives ?
Flexraid ?

Yes, I'm looking to have one large expandable volume. As I need the disk space I just add drives.
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post #9 of 13
11/10/12 at 5:24pm
You need Flexraid .

It will do exactly like you want and offers back up of data.

You won't need to format or lose any data either to set it up.
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post #10 of 13
11/10/12 at 9:31pm
Thread Starter 
After doing some research and reading, it looks like Flexraid is exactly what I need. Only question is can it be run on my already set up HTPC running windows 7 and if so how much space will it take up as my C: drive is getting full as well? And I assume I would need 2 additional 3TB drives if I want the Parity for protection???
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post #11 of 13
11/11/12 at 8:59am
It's takes up very little space on your c drive. It's a small download. No data is stored on your C drive do you'll be fine.

Next up-

You only need 1 parity drive. One drive for parity will allow you back up or rebuild recovery of any of your data drives in event of a data drive failed.

So perhaps one 3TB for parity. That's it. Keep all the drives you have now and pool them. You can add more storage drives to the pool anytime.
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post #12 of 13
11/11/12 at 9:00am
Oh and yes you can run it in weindows 7 or windows home server (whs)

You can run it on a PC or HTPC.
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post #13 of 13
11/11/12 at 9:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Foxbat121 View Post

Windows 8, if you are willing to upgrade, can offer you this 'on the fly' storage expansion with a feature called 'Storage Spaces'. You start by creating a virtual storage space much larger than your physical drives. As you filling up your physical drives, you can add new drives to the space without changing anything. So you basically has an infinite virtual parition that can be physically expanded at any time.
I think you still need to format the drive with ReFS initially to take advantage of Storage Spaces.
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