You don't actually set up Jbod, you just don't give it a RAID set on a card capable of RAID

 

Hello mate

To run drives in JBOD, you need to set you motherboard in Raid mode (in the bios)!
And then as the rig boots. You see it say something like press "Ctrl+I" to enter Raid setup!
You go into there, and make an Array and where it says what type of raid. You choose JBOD

But the trouble is! Going from IDE or AHCI mode to Raid will most likely mean you have to re-install the OS!
Although you might be OK going from AHCI to Raid! I'm not sure

But anyway, JBOD is in the Raid menu

 

I've not done this but in windows disk management you can change the disks to Dynamic then Create a spanned volume to do just that JBOD.

 

Ugh, JBOD has no advantages or performance increase. If anything do what the person above this post mentioned and just use windows disk management and create a span between the 2 drives. Honestly though, there really is no point to JBOD IMO.

 

The only advantage is one drive letter to think about when installing stuff.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeterUK I've not done this but in windows disk management you can change the disks to Dynamic then Create a spanned volume to do just that JBOD.

Oops, is it wrong of me to say "I wish I'd thought of that"

Quote:

Originally Posted by KusH Ugh, JBOD has no advantages or performance increase. If anything do what the person above this post mentioned and just use windows disk management and create a span between the 2 drives. Honestly though, there really is no point to JBOD IMO.

I wouldn't run JBOD either

OS drive
Games drive
And Storage drive

 

Just keep them separate. With JBOD you have no idea where files are stored on your drives. Is it on one or the other? If a drive fails, which files or parts of files are gone? Are the files spread across the slowest parts of the drives?

Managing an extra drive letter is less hassle. You have more control over where your stuff goes.

 

I kinda like the idea of JBOD, but the implementation details scare me.

As Kramy said, where on the drives are the files stored... what happens if one drive in the "array" fails, do you lose data on the other drives (do they appear normally, probably not)

etc etc

you're probably better off using a library.

I know Windows Home Server has a better solution, but sadly only available on that OS.

I wish mhddfs existed in Windows flavour.. it was quite useful when I was running Ubuntu...

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by KusH

Ugh, JBOD has no advantages or performance increase. If anything do what the person above this post mentioned and just use windows disk management and create a span between the 2 drives. Honestly though, there really is no point to JBOD IMO.

One Example that you could use this for is say for Steam Games. I have a Huge Steam Library, and by the nature of Steam, you cannot split the games files between hard drives, it all has to be under one folder. While a lot of my friends with larger libraries are actually running out of space on their steam drive. So, JBOD could be used to not have to worry about moving things around, and using say just two 7200 RPM drives and using them as one big drive.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mast3rRoot

Quote:

Originally Posted by KusH

Ugh, JBOD has no advantages or performance increase. If anything do what the person above this post mentioned and just use windows disk management and create a span between the 2 drives. Honestly though, there really is no point to JBOD IMO.

One Example that you could use this for is say for Steam Games. I have a Huge Steam Library, and by the nature of Steam, you cannot split the games files between hard drives, it all has to be under one folder. While a lot of my friends with larger libraries are actually running out of space on their steam drive. So, JBOD could be used to not have to worry about moving things around, and using say just two 7200 RPM drives and using them as one big drive.

It's trivially easy getting around that problem, without exposing yourself to the hassle of JBOD.

1) Go download Link Shell.
http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html

2) Navigate to your SteamApps folder.
3) Shutdown Steam.
4) Locate a game folder.
5) Move it to another drive.
6) Right-click it and "Pick Link Source"
7) Right-click the original location and "Drop As -> Symbolic Link"

I have Steam installed to my SSD - then I symlinked Steamapps over from my HDD. I've also moved less frequently played games over to my WD Green and symlinked them back to my Steamapps folder on my 7200RPM games drive. It all works perfectly.

 

This thread died 2 years ago....

I need a dead thread resurrection picture to start using when this happens

GOT IT!!!

 

Even though this was a necro, for anyone that's interested - Win 8 and Storage spaces is win.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kramy

It's trivially easy getting around that problem, without exposing yourself to the hassle of JBOD.
1) Go download Link Shell.
http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html
2) Navigate to your SteamApps folder.
3) Shutdown Steam.
4) Locate a game folder.
5) Move it to another drive.
6) Right-click it and "Pick Link Source"
7) Right-click the original location and "Drop As -> Symbolic Link"
I have Steam installed to my SSD - then I symlinked Steamapps over from my HDD. I've also moved less frequently played games over to my WD Green and symlinked them back to my Steamapps folder on my 7200RPM games drive. It all works perfectly.

Oh! Thats really neat! I knew about symbolic links and the such in Mac OSX, but I didn't know there was software out there for symbolic links in Windows.
So, I have a couple of questions:

1. So, say I have my Steam folder on one drive, and symbolic linking to my steamapps folder on another drive, and I install a new game... Will it put it on the drive that I have it linked to?

2. Is there a way that I can set up the links and everything so that when one drive fills up it overflows to the other? Or would that just be file management on my part?

Thanks,
Mast3rRoot

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mast3rRoot

Oh! Thats really neat! I knew about symbolic links and the such in Mac OSX, but I didn't know there was software out there for symbolic links in Windows.
So, I have a couple of questions:

1. So, say I have my Steam folder on one drive, and symbolic linking to my steamapps folder on another drive, and I install a new game... Will it put it on the drive that I have it linked to?

SymLinks for all intents and purposes act like folders, except that reads/writes get silently redirected to wherever the folder actually is.

So if you put SteamApps on your HDD and SymLink it to your SSD, then when a game gets installed it gets put on your HDD.
Quote:

Originally Posted by Mast3rRoot

2. Is there a way that I can set up the links and everything so that when one drive fills up it overflows to the other? Or would that just be file management on my part?

Hmm... no automated way to do that, that I know of. I generally just manage my space manually. I check my free space every few weeks, and if I need more I move something and SymLink it.

 

Yeah! Thanks for showing us this! This is really neat! I am Apple Certified and learned about symlinking with the terminal in OSX in my courses, but It never dawned on me to look into it on Windows!

 

JBOD is really a great tool for content management!