Hi guys, I have windows server 2008 r2 runing with a couple of hard drives. I share my folders across my network like everyone else. But I was wondering if there is any way you can have only one share but poiting to serveral different hard drives. like: \\server\movies source: c:\movies\ d:\movies e:\movies So all the folders from the different hard drives will me "merged" into just one share, making it so much easier to overview your entire collection, rather than having \\server\movies1, \\server\movies2, etc.. Or is this only possible with windows home server? Thanks
I figured it out. It is doable. If anyone is wondering, you can do this by using DFS Namespaces. It can even merge shares from ALL your servers on your network into one single share on just one server. Pretty neat. All built in with Win2k8srv
lol it's me again.. Just thought I'd say that i gave up on DFS.. it only delivered half way of what I needed.. Instead of having \\server\folder1, \\server\folder2 etc.. I now have \\server\folders\folder1, \\server\folders\folder2 etc.. Problem with DFS is that it adds a folder for each added share instead of just dumping the folders and files within each share in the \\server\folders, like I wanted. I've been searching high and low and there does not seem to be a way to make it happen. If anyone is deeper in the know than me, please hit me back with a link or explanation on how to make it happen. Thanks
You could make whole drive mounts into NTFS - Right Click on "My Computer" and select "Manage" - Then, from the panel on the left of the new screen, select "Disk Management" - Right-Click on one of your storage drives on the right and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths" - Click "Add" - Click "Browse" next to "Mount in the following empty NTFS folder" - Select one of your other storage drives and create a folder within it to mount the path to. - After this, you should see a new path in the place you selected which is a direct link to the other drive. but probably also not what you want. What you want can be easily done on Linux... sebus
Thanks for your input sebus. Yeah I've poked around with Disk manager as well. It ends up giving the same results as if I'd use DFS though which is like you said yourself not really what i wanted. Maybe I should seriously consider Linux next time my server is due for a reinstall though
Hi radx, I'm not sure if this will work the way you want, but it solved a similar problem I had. I had a triple boot system Hackintosh/Ubuntu/Windows. In order to access my files I created another partition for Data, which all three OS'es used. This partition was later shared out (from all OS'es) so it could accessed across my network, at any time. It would mean some messing around with partitions, but could give you the result you want.
Hi ZaForD, I dont quite see how that would help me. My problem is that I have a lot of media files (especially movies and heavy files like that) that I want in one single folder, all of them. And I cant put them all on one single hard drives because there isn't enough space for it. I could do what Sebus recommends raid the whole thing, thus ending up with one huge drive. But that is a bit difficult and it would require me to buy new hardware, raid controller etc. Also when I run out of space again, I have to break up the raid, add yet another drive and then copy everything back. Unless I have some flexibility in my raid setup which probably would be quite expensive. So I simply want one share across the network where all my movies are stored. Not fifteen different \\server\movies1, \\server\movies2 etc. Because It would be a hazzle to remember on what of all these shares are my movies I filmed when I went to Asia for instance. Hope you see my problem here Appreciate you guys giving me feedback.
I'm not familiar with Windows 7 Libraries. I tried Google it but i found a lot of unrelated stuff. Do you have a wiki article or MS link?
W7 libraries works on that way (you can use several location for etc My Documents) and it's already installed and used in Windows Server R2. You don't have to activate it, it's already in place like in Windows 7.