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I used to have 2 main workstations. Windows and Linux - Ubuntu for the Linux. Between the two of them, I had more than 30 hard drives in 2 NAS boxes operating on a JBOD basis and each workstation having about 6 and 8 internal drives. Now I am consolidating all the drives on one workstation (with the exception of the internal drives of the second workstation)

I will now have a Windows workstation with 28 hard drives and 3 USB attached drives of which 12 are Linux and ext3 file system (read using extfsd) and the rest windows. Problem is if I start windows with all drives attached, half of the drives disappear and I don't know which NAS box is which - media files and extfsd is transparent.

The NTFS drives (> 20 including USB) have scripts and programs already attached which startup so I can't rework - my HPZ800 is temperamental. Can't risk it.

Why do I NOT want to use folders? I may spend the next year devising a folder scheme and where to mount it. Lets just say I have issues.

My question is how can I permanently address the Linux drives without using numbers and empty folders? Can I use Alphanumeric i.e. A1 for the first Linux and M1 for the last 12 (skipping I1 - easy to get wrong.

A1
B1
C1
And so on

This is not a duplicate of any question because I want to use a specific addressing system on a specific file management system.

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  • 30 drives all spinning up at the same time will draw a lot of power. (30x roughly10 to 20W) I hope you have a good PSU or one with plenty spare capacity.
    – Hennes
    Commented Sep 13, 2018 at 11:01
  • So instead of a folder scheme you're deciding on a letter scheme. If you're fine with A1, B1, etc., why not mount them on c:/mnt/A1, c:/mnt/B1, etc.?
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Sep 13, 2018 at 11:03
  • @Hennes These z800 workstations have 800, 1000 and 1200 PSU's available. But you can't stuff 30 drives internally, (I never managed to shoe-horn more than 22 in one), so I presume he uses a NAS box that can be used as an external SATA enclosure. And which has it's own powersupply
    – Tonny
    Commented Sep 13, 2018 at 11:04
  • Potentially a duplicate of superuser.com/questions/293922/…
    – Mokubai ♦
    Commented Sep 13, 2018 at 11:08
  • @Hennes - they are 2 separate JBOD each powered.
    – seanbw
    Commented Sep 24, 2018 at 12:40

2 Answers 2

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Linux doesn't have "drive letters". Instead you mount a filesystem somewhere in a directory tree. In other words, everything is a folder. No way around that. You can give your folders any name you want, so a single letter (or a letter with a number) is fine. If that makes you happy.

Now Windows does have a problem, because you can't assign more than the 26 letters of the alphabet, so you will have to do something else ...

As for accessing Linux drives from Windows remotely, you could also just export the single parent folder of all the mounted folders (however you choose the names), and assign a single letter to thet exported folder. There's no need to export whole filesystems only.

I'd also question whether it's a good idea to consolidate all drives into a single computer ...

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  • Windows lets you mount drives on an arbitrary path, no problems. Only OP specifically does not want to do that.
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Sep 13, 2018 at 11:04
  • @grawity: Exactly. "something else" = use the path. Or the remote name.
    – dirkt
    Commented Sep 13, 2018 at 11:24
  • Windows has 26 drive-letters, out of which A, B and C are already assigned, leaving at most 23. Poster says he has 20+ already assigned. But he only needs one letter for mounting, which can then be deleted and reused (link). (I also think that this complex architecture will be fragile.)
    – harrymc
    Commented Sep 13, 2018 at 12:48
  • Looks as if I have to mount in a folder. I guess the procedure is to create the folders first, plug JBOD in and then run disk management with ExtFSD. @grawity =use the path. Or the remote name. = Does this solution not result in a pool of the 26 drives? All 80TB of them. Will it become a poll of 20 sub folders?
    – seanbw
    Commented Sep 24, 2018 at 12:43
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In the old days you could do double drive-letters if you had the Novell Netware client installed, but ONLY for network drives as far as I recall.
This may still be possible on modern Windows. I never had a reason to try it.

If it still works today you could mount the individual drives on folders and then share the mount-points. Map those shares via \\localhost\share with double drive-letters and you will simulate the effect.

Of course access to those drives will take a performance hit, because everything must go via the network stack. Even though the traffic won't actually leave the PC you still have the overhead of the network stack.

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