Karaoke Forums

I have all of my cdg music, filler tunes, video bits, everything for my show on a WD1tb external harddrive. I've copied it onto another harddrive (different brand), so my computer (Vista Home Premium) recognizes it as a different harddrive. Which in turn Compuhost won't recognize it as the same as the original. So... I bought another WD1tb external harddrive, and I want to copy EVERYTHING from the original, to the new one, and have the computer recognize it as the same drive as the original, which in turn will make Compuhost recognize it as the original. How can I do this, so if my computer recognizes the "original" harddrive as G, I want it to recognize the "new harddrive as G instead of H. Basically, how can I clone the original onto the new one? Just so this thread doesn't get into another legality debate, I'm doing this so I have back-up (just in case) something happens.

Rosario

What you might want to do is pick a new drive letter completely, like T. Then you can put your files on any drive in any folder and in the cmd.exe window do:

subst t: h:\

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

So, Mckyj are you saying that all I have to do is re-name (both) of the harddrives the same thing, and I should be good to go?

Rosario

There is the duplication of content, and then there is the duplication of the drive.

Duplication of 'content' - means the files are the same on both drives. I use Allway Sync for this and it does a GREAT job. Other ways of doing this are SyncToy - which is part of the Windows XP PowerToys from Microsoft, and rsync which is how it's typically done with a Mac.


Duplication of the drive itself, is best done using a drive duplication software like Ghost or something similar. When you use this method the drives can't be told apart.

If I had to guess, when you plugged in the second drive you got a different drive letter.

The 'proper' way to handle this on a more permanent basis would be to right click 'My Computer', and the select 'Manage'. Once the 'Computer Management' window opens, click on disk management. Look for your external drive, right click on 'Change Drive Letter and Paths...' A new window pops open, select change - and then select the new drive letter that the other drive had. If you get a warning message just accept it.

Just a warning though - if you plug in the original drive it may get a drive letter that's different, and if you plug in both drive to the same computer you'll have to change the drive letter again.

Working with 'backup' libraries can be tough since the drive letter can, and will, change at the most inopportune times. But walking through the above should keep that drive with the same letter until something happens that causes it to 'move' to another letter.

I don't know what you mean by "rename the hard drives". The subst command maps a drive letter to an arbitrary place.

So if you create a file called compuhost.bat and put it on your desktop:

[pre] subst t: g:\
"C:\Program Files\CompuHost\compuhost.exe"[/pre]
That will call up CompuHost after first mapping the drive letter to your existing drive.

Then if you end up putting in a new hard drive which ends up mapped at H:, then you just need to edit that file and change the g:\ to h:\.

Of course if you don't like that idea, you can look at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

You know, I was going into a long-winded explanation on drive assignment and software routing and decided that your only real problem is that you probably have both drives plugged in at once.

Try unplugging the original (remove it properly) and putting the clone in it's place and I'll bet you wind up with the correct drive letter. One caveat, if you don't remove the drive properly then you might wind up with a different leter assignment since the O.S. may not have gotten the message correctly. If that's the case you can still go through Disk Management and change it yourself.

But no you can't assign the same letter to both drives. When you assign a drive letter you're not making any changes whatsoever to the drive. The only change is in the O.S.

That's why switching drive brands didn't make a difference. Hope that didn't cost you anything.

-DeCarabas

I have two 320GB Segate FreeAgentGo drives that are about half full with DJ and my Karaoke files.

I still scratch my head when I hear people getting 1TB and larger drives.

I use one as my work drive, the second is strictly for backup in the event the primary fails. I also bring an identically configured laptop to each show for the same reason.

Anyway..

Just make sure the drives have the same name, copy the contents of one to the other, and then provided you only have one plugged in at a time, you should be fine.

I'll try copying everything on to the (new) harddrive, then disconnect the (old) harddrive and hook up the new one and see if it gives it the same letter. I WON'T hook both of them up to my computer at the same time. The old one was G, so if the new one is recognized as G, I should be ok. Oh, Cheese, the reason for getting 1TB, is it's CHEAPER.

Rosario

Some "PEOPLE" have karaoke collections that won't fit on a 320 GB hard drive, or even two of them. I know one KJ around here that claims to have over 160,000 songs in his library. At 4MB -5MB per song that would take up to 800GB of space.

Bruce, I wish that were MY problem, as I only have about 9650 individual titles. I wouldn't mind having 20,000 or so. But, back to the subject at hand, as I said, the 1tb was on sale, and cheaper than the smaller harddrives, so being frugal, I said why not. Who knows, maybe one day I'll hit the jackpot, and buy a cdg disc collection from a "former" kj that has 50,000 songs.

Rosario

If you are worried about disk crashing, you may be better off using a RAID system, specifically RAID 1. I am not that familiar with Vista but on the Mac side, the software RAID is built in to the OS. What you do is connect BOTH of the drives to the system. Then you format it to be RAID 1. Then it comes up as one single volume (or drive G as you call it). Then if one of the drive fails, the other drive (now with exactly the same content), will take over until you replace the dead drive.

This gives you a convenience of doing one write to both drives and safety of having duplicate data. Do an online search for software RAID for windows and I am sure you can find one, if the OS doesn't already have it built in.

_________________

Seize the day and SING!!!

As far as I remember, the drive letter shouldn't be an issue with CompuHost, as long as the directory structure on the second drive is exactly the same. CompuHost will recognize the drive even with a different drive letter.

I think I tried that once and it worked, too.

Eben, I don't think you can run a raid array through USB.

Any software that has in it's index external files will normally look for
drive letter \ Directory \ File.
Don't matter what else is on the drive.

Whatever single drive plugged in will be seen as the next drive letter.

Look at an MP3 play list that uses an external drive.
It will give drive letter \ Directory \ File
for every single track.

You can run RAID enclosures over USB but the enclosure has to handle everything. The computer sees it as one big honkin' drive. (honkin' is a technical term).

It's far more common to see them on eSATA, but for under $20 you can get a USB to eSATA adapter...

You can run RAID from a motherboard and from internal to the operating system as well which is far more common.

There are multiple cases of people using a small hub and multiple thumbdrives as a RAID array. It's possible to do a lot of creative things if you have the know-how and gumption to do it (gumption is another 'southern' technical term).

It's not like I've been around this for more than 20 years... oh wait.... Now I feel old...

Yes you are right.
Sorry, a bit of a brain fart there.
I have worked with many Lacie drives that use it.
We use gumption in the UK as well.

You feel old...
Been doing it over 25 years and I feel fantas... OK old.

Raid 1, in Windows, is referred to as "mirroring", and can be done in the disk management tools; however, I have never been able to make it work, because it always says that the version of Windows that I have doesn't support mirroring. Even when I had an MSDN license and could run any version of Windows that I chose to, I never could manage to get a version that allowed mirroring onto a box that had identical drives, so who knows whether it works or not.

The answer to Windows system owners has always been to buy a bigger hard drive, and try to somehow get your old files onto it. Why they don't give us tools like Tru64 LSM, which implements software RAID 5, or one of the many other UNIX and VMS utilities for disk management, I don't know, especially now that we can chain so many external drives together. Maybe they think that people are too stupid to use them. I run Windows because the majority of the applications that I need are only available for it, and because I don't have time to tinker with the free versions of PC *IX, but I hate its limited functionality.

Guess what I used to do for a living...

-denise

Drug Barron, Smuggler, Ice cream salesman.?

Well, they wouldn't let me be a Catholic priest, so I had to do something.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe raid0 is mirroring, and raid1 is a stripeset, which I don't like because it doubles your chance of losing data to a disk failure. Guess how long it's been since I did anything productive? Anyway, mirroring or raid5 are definitely the best concepts to use for storage. In raid5, you stack up a whole bunch of disks and combine the space, and each one has a piece of the big picture, as well as its own data. You can lose one disk and rebuild it without losing data. As long as you don't ignore the first disk failure and lose another one, you don't even have to shut the system down to replace it. Cool stuff.

-dee

You're right Sevarin, CH will find the files on any drive as long as the file structure is the same. I'm one of the users that suggested they add the feature, since often times when using external drives the drive designation will change. Works like a charm now.

Thanks for all the replies, and to Sevarin and Tbreen, it's good to know that Compuhost will find the songs even if the drive is a different letter. I will be copying my harddrive this weekend, I found an easy way to do it, I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

Rosario
Serenity Now Karaoke