Database spanning multiple partitions.....help

I posted a message earlier, thinking I knew the how. However I didn't
Cany anyone tell me how to change an existing database that exists on an H:
drive to span across another partition of say an I: .
My idea is this, the database is growing. We expanded the mirrored hard
drives from 70gb to 140gb. Now we have an additional amount of unused
space. I formatted the new partition and gave it an I: name.
I thought you could give the database a "Secondary" location. I thought
this meant that if the database filled up my H: drive, then it would
automatically start writing to the I: drive. Is this the case? If so, how
can I set it up?
Thanks for any help
GordonYou thought wrong Gordon<g>. You would be better off to change the original
partition to the full size of the new drives and not have to worry about
splitting them up. Since the two partitions are on the same drive array
there is no performance gain in splitting them. You can add a new file to
the existing file group on the new partition but what will happen is this.
SQL Server uses a proportional fill algorithm to fill the files within the
filegroup. This is based on the amount of free space in each file. Ideally
you start with multiple files that are empty and sql server will fill them
equally as it inserts new rows. In your case if you simply add a new file
there will be some data written to the new file and some to the old. The
ratio depends on the amount of free space in each file. When filling in
disproportion like that it will cause more reads and writes to one file vs
spreading evenly over all of them. While you can do what you are after you
need to realize this is not going to work the way you thought. I recommend
you repartition the drive to make it one large partition instead of two
smaller ones.
--
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
"Gordon" <Gordon@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:90E69280-63BF-4BA8-8F73-584C9534B06E@.microsoft.com...
>I posted a message earlier, thinking I knew the how. However I didn't
> Cany anyone tell me how to change an existing database that exists on an
> H:
> drive to span across another partition of say an I: .
> My idea is this, the database is growing. We expanded the mirrored hard
> drives from 70gb to 140gb. Now we have an additional amount of unused
> space. I formatted the new partition and gave it an I: name.
> I thought you could give the database a "Secondary" location. I thought
> this meant that if the database filled up my H: drive, then it would
> automatically start writing to the I: drive. Is this the case? If so,
> how
> can I set it up?
> Thanks for any help
> Gordon