How do I combine several small HDDs to make one large HDD?

[m654321]

Over the years, I've collected several laptop HDDs, particularly now that we've converted all our household's computers to the much faster SSDs.
However, I don't really want to get rid of these old drives, especially if I can find a use for them.

If I could somehow combine these HDDs (they vary in size from 250GB to 1TB) into one large drive, then I could use them
for external data storage, via USB connectivity.

Could someone either explain to me how I can do this, or at least point me in the right direction?

Many thanks - much appreciated.
Mike

[bitsnpcs]

Hello Mike,

for Linux - https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions...ard-drives

Additional info click through on the above reply - https://www.howtoforge.com/linux_lvm


If you also wish to use it on windows machines

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCQu-WmE4SE

[Scott(0)]

[member=411]bitsnpcs[/member] - Very good information, thank you.

[bitsnpcs]

[member=47]Scott[/member] I'll try it too when I replace the 32 bit desktops this year.

[Moltke]

[member=411]bitsnpcs[/member]  Such a nice informaton! I didn't even ever think this was possible. Bookmarked!

[bitsnpcs]

[member=7109]Moltke[/member] if many spare hdd combined -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3ufUXZafAk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUL2vesXu0o


It seems there can be made "pools", a combined group effort, it could be done by a community, as a source of funding for a project/s.

[m654321]

Hello Mike,

for Linux - https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions...ard-drives

Additional info click through on the above reply - https://www.howtoforge.com/linux_lvm

Many thanks btsnpcs - very useful information.
The only reservation I have now, after reading the links you gave, is that if one of the drives (within the larger spanned drive) fails, then you risk losing all the data - a significant consideration !
Therefore, bearing this in mind,  the spanned drive would need to be backed-up frequently to mitigate against such data loss occurring ...

Many thanks again - much appreciated.

[justme2]

Many thanks btsnpcs - very useful information.
The only reservation I have now, after reading the links you gave, is that if one of the drives (within the larger spanned drive) fails, then you risk losing all the data - a significant consideration !
Therefore, bearing this in mind,  the spanned drive would need to be backed-up frequently to mitigate against such data loss occurring ...

Many thanks again - much appreciated.

If a single high capacity HDD fails, the same situation applies - possibility of loss of all data! The question is, is one or more of three spanned drives any more likely to fail than a single drive? Whatever the system, backup is essential but then the backup device may fail. What then? I used CDR/DVR in the past but after storage some became unreadable.

My objection to spanned drives would be the increased noise and power requirements and my strategy would be to convert each drive to USB and use independently.

[bitsnpcs]

Many thanks btsnpcs - very useful information.
The only reservation I have now, after reading the links you gave, is that if one of the drives (within the larger spanned drive) fails, then you risk losing all the data - a significant consideration !
Therefore, bearing this in mind,  the spanned drive would need to be backed-up frequently to mitigate against such data loss occurring ...

Many thanks again - much appreciated.

[member=458]m654321[/member] you are right, it is an important consideration when making the decision as to how many to span and how many to use as single backups of specific data as [member=296]justme2[/member] writes.
Possibly if there is a drive health tool, like defraggler for Linux, they could be checked, benchmarked and regularly as part of maintenance routine.

[m654321]

[quote author=bitsnpcs link=topic=5001.msg37823#msg37823 date=1515766899]
Many thanks btsnpcs - very useful information.
The only reservation I have now, after reading the links you gave, is that if one of the drives (within the larger spanned drive) fails, then you risk losing all the data - a significant consideration !
Therefore, bearing this in mind,  the spanned drive would need to be backed-up frequently to mitigate against such data loss occurring ...

Many thanks again - much appreciated.

If a single high capacity HDD fails, the same situation applies - possibility of loss of all data! The question is, is one or more of three spanned drives any more likely to fail than a single drive?
[/quote]

The answer to that is yes.
The probability or chance of any given single drive failing, no matter how small the risk, is the same, with the caveat of all things being equal: drive type, make etc.
If you have 4 of these drives combined to make 1 larger drive, then the probability of the larger drive failing is increased 4 times, i.e. you sum the probabilities for the risk for each of the component drives.

Any mathematicians out there, please correct me if I'm not making sense on probabilities ... :o

Yes, not very good from an energy consumption point of view either, especially if you have several of these: e.g. around 5 to 10 Amps current drain for 10 drives!

Mike