How do I setup Windows Spanned Dynamic Disks to be used in Linux?

hoodedmanwithsythe · 11-22-2007, 04:28 AM

damn even if I can get the drive to be seen by the linux it is going to be a bitch to get linux to write the ntfs read yes but write is a big no

nLEyETn · 11-23-2007, 12:14 PM

is that even with ntfs-3g? Right now my main concern is letting Linux read it.

hoodedmanwithsythe · 11-23-2007, 06:37 PM

I don't know yet.

hoodedmanwithsythe · 11-26-2007, 01:53 PM

Hi there its me again I don't think I can get it to work and my time demands are growing.
So I decided to share my line of research which is in Fake raid I will continue to look in to this as well. but I will be going to Australia this winter and so I really need to get 2 weeks ahead on my college work as I will be leaving 2 weeks before the end of term and so can't see my self having time to find your solution before I leave.
If I am right the solution is to be found within the Fake Raid or Software raid setups. I will have a lot more free time after I get back so if you haven't found the solution by then I will get back to it. once I can get the Linux to see it I Know there will be problems with the NTFS - there always is. but this can be overcome.
Hope I have been of help,
Tim(Hoodedmanwithsythe)

nLEyETn · 11-27-2007, 07:14 PM

I understand, thanks for looking into it so much already though. I'll continue to experiment with it, and if I get it to work, I'll post it back in this thread. Thanks again for trying.

nLEyETn · 11-29-2007, 09:05 PM

Eureka!

I finally figured it out, I had all the steps correct, but my device sizes were setup wrong in the /etc/newdevice1 file that I setup. I used a program called LdmDump which gave me the same sector sizes for my logical disk which I had already taken from fdisk: 625140337. When I first saw that I thought it confirmed that I was using the right sizes. Later I realized it also showed another size in that program; the size was for the volume on the dynamic disks: 1250276993 sectors. Well if you divide that by two you get: 625138496.5 which even though I didn't get a whole number, which I would need, I could see that it was less than the sizes my devices were setup for. After experimenting some more with setting the devices as so:

Code:

# Offset into   Size of this    Raid type       Device          Start sector
# volume        device                                          of device
0               625138496       linear          /dev/sdb1       0
625138496       625138496       linear          /dev/sdd1       0

Code:

# Offset into   Size of this    Raid type       Device          Start sector
# volume        device                                          of device
0               625138496       linear          /dev/sdb1       0
625138496       625138497       linear          /dev/sdd1       0

and so on...

Nothing would work... Finally, after looking around some more, I came across a program which gave me the correct device sizes ...

Code:

$ blockdev --getsize /dev/sdb1
$ blockdev --getsize /dev/sdd1

So I set my table file correctly, ran dmsetup again and it worked. All I had to do after that was mount the new device. So now it's working great. Thanks for all the help and effort Tim. It was really appreciated, especially since I couldn't find any clear information on the topic.

hoodedmanwithsythe · 12-03-2007, 10:35 AM

That's brilliant,
Well done, thanks for sharing the info I am sure this will help others.
Perhaps you should write up your notes on how you made it work and submit it as a linux answer ing the tutorials section of this site.
Thanks for Sharing,
Tim(HoodedManWithSythe)

alfonsojon · 04-12-2018, 09:08 PM

nLEyETn, I wanted to thank you though it's been 11 years haha! This is still relevant in Ubuntu 18.04, so thank you for the information. I found that I had to reboot my system for the drive to show up in Caja (Mate's file manager). Thanks again!