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Author Topic: I would like to span 2 hd  (Read 3202 times)

WolfWalker

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I would like to span 2 hd
« on: June 07, 2008, 08:35:54 am »

I have 2 hd each 500gigs I have over 800 gigs of music. I named music 1; music 2.  I would like to have 450 gigs on one drive then the rest on music 2.  Is there a way to do that?
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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #1 on: June 07, 2008, 08:47:52 am »

I put "A - J" on one drive and "K - Z" on the other and it works out about right.

I do not know of any way to automate this however if that was your wish.
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WolfWalker

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #2 on: June 07, 2008, 08:50:44 am »

How did you do it. What fields do you use to rip music, to find replace.
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marko

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #3 on: June 07, 2008, 09:13:37 am »

I put "A - J" on one drive and "K - Z" on the other and it works out about right.

I do not know of any way to automate this however if that was your wish.
you know we can use expressions in the base path field of the rename from properties tool now?
something along the lines of:

if(isrange([album artist (auto)],a-j),D:\,E:\)

should get you started.

WolfWalker

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #4 on: June 07, 2008, 09:14:31 am »

thank you!!!!
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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #5 on: June 07, 2008, 10:10:22 am »

you know we can use expressions in the base path field of the rename from properties tool now?
something along the lines of:

if(isrange([album artist (auto)],a-j),D:\,E:\)

should get you started.

Yea!
Somehow I had expected you would come along with something like this, oh master of expressions. Thanks Marko  ;)

I have yet to get a grasp of these things.  ?

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WolfWalker

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #6 on: June 07, 2008, 11:18:15 am »

I have tried to do the function and it did not work.  Can you step me thru how do this.
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Alex B

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #7 on: June 07, 2008, 12:15:16 pm »

Wolfwalker,

You would need to describe exactly what you have now and what you would like to do.

Where are the files now? (drive letters, the amount of drives or partitions, the amount of media files on each drive partition/drive, etc)

Would you like to redistribute the files inside the existing, possibly quite full drives or do you have two empty drives?

(In any case I hope you have at least one full backup set on some other drives which are not going to be involved in the process.)
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MrHaugen

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #8 on: June 09, 2008, 04:22:06 am »

I would buy a third 500GB disk, and a simple Raid 5 Sata controller and use the raid5 function.
Just make the disk dynamic and raid 5 in disk management. Increased security and speed. It will also future proof your system for increasing library size.
I just hate to have many disks for the same data type.

You can also make the disks dynamic and make spanned volume with the disks you got today, to make the disks appear as one huge drive.
This will not be as safe thou. If one disk fails, all data is gone.
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Alex B

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #9 on: June 09, 2008, 04:59:27 am »

I think it is premature to suggest anything before WolfWalker answers my questions.

We don't know if the mentioned drives are for instance a 500 GB internal C: and an external 500GB USB2 drive, two new internal or external drives or something else. Also, we don't know if the media files are already consuming most of the available drive space or not.

WolfWalker has logged in after my post, but for some reason he didn't reply.
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WolfWalker

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #10 on: June 09, 2008, 06:31:52 am »

Ok guys I hope I give you the right info.

2 wd external hd 500 gigs=465

D:=Music #1
E:=Music #2

D: has 415 used
E: has 345 gigs used

naming is artist/album auto/Ablum
track # - name

I would like to set it up like Marko suggested

I have 250 C: drive with 120 gigs left.

This is all on my laptop.

I could do this all on my desktop with has a media drive to 500 gig hd external and 500 internal.


what I need is better way to mange my files with 450 worth of files spread out across 2 or more hd.
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Alex B

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #11 on: June 09, 2008, 07:13:16 am »

Reorganizing the existing data on the quite full drives would be a slow and bit risky process.

Have you considered buying a single new 1 TB drive? The prices of 1 TB drives have come down and it would be a straightforward process to copy the media files to a single drive.

You could use the two 500 GB drives for backup.
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WolfWalker

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #12 on: June 09, 2008, 07:26:13 am »

I could do that but I would still like to get better control of my library.

Any suggestions
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Alex B

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #13 on: June 09, 2008, 08:13:03 am »

Probably marko would be able to create a tailored expression for you, but I would suggest using two playlists. One for the files that will go to drive 1 and another for the files that will go to the drive 2.

1. Create a view scheme that shows the "Album Artist (auto)" field in the album thumbnail mode and in alphabetical order.

2. Select the amount of thumbs that you want to store on the drive1 (the status line on the botton toolbar shows the total amount of the selected data). Send this selection to the playlist 1.

3. Invert the selection (Ctrl+Shift+A) and send the rest of the files to the playlist 2.

4. Since you cannot move move big chunks of data from a drive to another because the drives are quite full you need to process the playlists in small batches.

For instance, select the first 10 GB of files in the playlist 1 and use the Rename, Move, & Copy Files tool for moving the files to your preferred directory structure on the drive 1. Notice the seq number of the last file in the selection.
Then move the first 10 GB of the files in the playlist 2 to the drive 2.
Then move the next 10 GB of the files in the playlist 1 to the drive 1
and so on...
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Alex B

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #14 on: June 09, 2008, 08:50:40 am »

I just tested marko's expression and it works fine.

Here's how I set it up (I used my X drive instead of C):



Naturally you would still need to first check if the j letter is the correct break point.
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robydago

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #15 on: June 09, 2008, 09:01:28 am »

WolfWalker,
why don't you just span (using windows embedded feature) the first disk to the second?
you'll end up with only one letter, but with 1000GB capacity
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AoXoMoXoA

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #16 on: June 09, 2008, 09:21:57 am »

WolfWalker,
why don't you just span (using windows embedded feature) the first disk to the second?
you'll end up with only one letter, but with 1000GB capacity
handy, but risky . . . if either drive goes out then you lose the data on BOTH. I'd make sure I had my backups up-to-date!
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hit_ny

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #17 on: June 09, 2008, 11:52:21 am »

handy, but risky . . . if either drive goes out then you lose the data on BOTH. I'd make sure I had my backups up-to-date!

My concerns exactly!

There should not be any need to span at all as MC presents a unified interface already :)

As to moving stuff, i would do it manually. If you have genre sub-folders then its easy to do an alt+enter on them in win explorer and get an idea of how much they contain and also how much is available on the other drive.

Then just drag which folders that fit via the tree.

Course if you are not setup that way then you have to use expressions, which is fine if *all* your files are imported into MC but if some are not then things get left behind.
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robydago

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Re: I would like to span 2 hd
« Reply #18 on: June 09, 2008, 12:27:03 pm »

handy, but risky . . . if either drive goes out then you lose the data on BOTH. I'd make sure I had my backups up-to-date!

well, backups are needed anyway: with no span, he's always risking half his music if either drive goes out...

Is losing not all music, but all A-J music of any consolation?
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