# Store Indexes on multiple drives
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [April 26, 2019, 6:43am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568 "2019-04-26T06:43:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dheeraj\_kumar](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dheeraj_kumar)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2019, 6:43am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568/1 "2019-04-26T06:43:58Z")
I am new to ES ,I have single node ES instance on a Windows machine, i was trying to find a way to where i can point my new index on a new drive but i could not find any way of handling that.
Even adding multiple path in elasticsearch.yml file in path.data is failing
example: path.data : [C:\ES,D:\ES] does not work.
Is there a way of handling that? any help would be much appreciated.
---
### Author:  [@DavidTurner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/DavidTurner)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2019, 8:35am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568/2 "2019-04-26T08:35:05Z")
If you have a simple one-node setup then it's probably best to keep all your data in one place. If you want to move the Elasticsearch data from one drive to another then you can shut the node down, move the data path to the new drive, adjust your node's configuration to point to the new location and then restart the node.
---
### Author:  [@dheeraj\_kumar](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dheeraj_kumar)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2019, 8:44am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568/3 "2019-04-26T08:44:49Z")
Thank you for your response @DavidTurner . I would still want to understand the process of adding multiple disks to path.data to see if it gives me any performance gain. Could you suggest me a way to achieve that.
---
### Author:  [@DavidTurner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/DavidTurner)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2019, 8:48am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568/4 "2019-04-26T08:48:12Z")
Ok, yes, you can try to set `path.data: ["C:\ES", "D:\ES"]`, but note that Elasticsearch doesn't move existing data between the two paths to do any kind of balancing, so you'll only see an effect with new indices.
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### Author:  [@dheeraj\_kumar](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dheeraj_kumar)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2019, 9:03am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568/5 "2019-04-26T09:03:52Z")
@DavidTurner I tried updating the path as said but ES fails to start, the idea is to use the available storage to split the data across.
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### Author:  [@DavidTurner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/DavidTurner)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2019, 9:24am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568/6 "2019-04-26T09:24:48Z")
> [@dheeraj\_kumar](#):
>
> ES fails to start
ES rarely fails to start without emitting helpful log messages. Can you share the messages you're seeing?
---
### Author:  [@dheeraj\_kumar](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dheeraj_kumar)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2019, 9:45am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568/7 "2019-04-26T09:45:26Z")
@DavidTurner
this is the message
---
### Author:  [@DavidTurner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/DavidTurner)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2019, 10:02am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568/8 "2019-04-26T10:02:10Z")
A screenshot of half of an error message is basically useless.
---
### Author:  [@dheeraj\_kumar](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dheeraj_kumar)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2019, 10:09am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568/9 "2019-04-26T10:09:30Z")
Exception in thread "main" SettingsException[Failed to load settings from [elasticsearch.yml]]; nested: MarkedYAMLException[while scanning a double-quoted scalar
in 'reader', line 9, column 13:
path.data: ["I:\ES","H:\ES"]
^
found unknown escape character E(69)
in 'reader', line 9, column 17:
path.data: ["I:\ES","H:\ES"]
^
at [Source: sun.nio.ch.ChannelInputStream@2ab4bc72; line: 9, column: 13]]; nested: ScannerException[while scanning a double-quoted scalar
in 'reader', line 9, column 13:
path.data: ["I:\ES","H:\ES"]
^
found unknown escape character E(69)
in 'reader', line 9, column 17:
path.data: ["I:\ES","H:\ES"]
^
];
at org.elasticsearch.common.settings.Settings$Builder.loadFromStream(Settings.java:1216)
at org.elasticsearch.common.settings.Settings$Builder.loadFromPath(Settings.java:1189)
at org.elasticsearch.node.InternalSettingsPreparer.prepareEnvironment(InternalSettingsPreparer.java:100)
at org.elasticsearch.cli.EnvironmentAwareCommand.createEnv(EnvironmentAwareCommand.java:95)
at org.elasticsearch.cli.EnvironmentAwareCommand.execute(EnvironmentAwareCommand.java:86)
at org.elasticsearch.cli.Command.mainWithoutErrorHandling(Command.java:124)
at org.elasticsearch.cli.Command.main(Command.java:90)
at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.main(Elasticsearch.java:116)
at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.main(Elasticsearch.java:93)
Caused by: com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat.yaml.snakeyaml.error.MarkedYAMLException: while scanning a double-quoted scalar
in 'reader', line 9, column 13:
path.data: ["I:\ES","H:\ES"]
^
found unknown escape character E(69)
in 'reader', line 9, column 17:
path.data: ["I:\ES","H:\ES"]
^
at [Source: sun.nio.ch.ChannelInputStream@2ab4bc72; line: 9, column: 13]
at com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat.yaml.snakeyaml.error.MarkedYAMLException.from(MarkedYAMLException.java:27)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat.yaml.YAMLParser.nextToken(YAMLParser.java:343)
at org.elasticsearch.common.xcontent.json.JsonXContentParser.nextToken(JsonXContentParser.java:52)
at org.elasticsearch.common.settings.Settings.fromXContent(Settings.java:733)
at org.elasticsearch.common.settings.Settings.fromXContent(Settings.java:699)
at org.elasticsearch.common.settings.Settings.access$500(Settings.java:84)
at org.elasticsearch.common.settings.Settings$Builder.loadFromStream(Settings.java:1212)
... 8 more
Caused by: while scanning a double-quoted scalar
in 'reader', line 9, column 13:
path.data: ["I:\ES","H:\ES"]
^
found unknown escape character E(69)
in 'reader', line 9, column 17:
path.data: ["I:\ES","H:\ES"]
```
^
at org.yaml.snakeyaml.scanner.ScannerImpl.scanFlowScalarNonSpaces(ScannerImpl.java:1906)
at org.yaml.snakeyaml.scanner.ScannerImpl.scanFlowScalar(ScannerImpl.java:1843)
at org.yaml.snakeyaml.scanner.ScannerImpl.fetchFlowScalar(ScannerImpl.java:1029)
at org.yaml.snakeyaml.scanner.ScannerImpl.fetchDouble(ScannerImpl.java:1011)
at org.yaml.snakeyaml.scanner.ScannerImpl.fetchMoreTokens(ScannerImpl.java:396)
at org.yaml.snakeyaml.scanner.ScannerImpl.checkToken(ScannerImpl.java:226)
at org.yaml.snakeyaml.parser.ParserImpl$ParseFlowSequenceEntry.produce(ParserImpl.java:628)
at org.yaml.snakeyaml.parser.ParserImpl$ParseFlowSequenceFirstEntry.produce(ParserImpl.java:616)
at org.yaml.snakeyaml.parser.ParserImpl.peekEvent(ParserImpl.java:157)
at org.yaml.snakeyaml.parser.ParserImpl.getEvent(ParserImpl.java:167)
at com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat.yaml.YAMLParser.nextToken(YAMLParser.java:340)
... 13 more
```
---
### Author:  [@DavidTurner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/DavidTurner)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2019, 10:14am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568/10 "2019-04-26T10:14:06Z")
Thanks. Looks like a Windows thing, I think you have to double all the backslashes:
```auto
path.data: ["I:\\ES","H:\\ES"]
```
---
### Author:  [@dheeraj\_kumar](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dheeraj_kumar)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2019, 10:18am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568/11 "2019-04-26T10:18:26Z")
@DavidTurner Thank you so much, it solved my issue.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [May 24, 2019, 10:18am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/store-indexes-on-multiple-drives/178568/12 "2019-05-24T10:18:27Z")
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