is there a way to combine harddrives?..someone help

[ndnsoulja]

hi, i had a 40 gb harddrive and it was kinda full so i bought another 80gb harddrive. but now i have two drives..like i have a C: drive and a F: drive. is there a way to combine both of the harddrives so it could just be one big harddrive(c:). is there some program i could use? or any other method. i found something in the microsoft website but it says you have to back up the your stuff. i don't have a place to back up 40gb stuff?..i'd appreciate it if anyone can help me out. thanks.

[Rafjr00]

No not really. You could use the software that came with your new hard drive too copy the 40gig over too the 80gig and use it as your boot drive and then use the 40gig for storage of music or something, but you can use both of them as one drive. :bang head

[I.M.O.G.]

Why not?

You would be better off to use them seperately. You will get better performance keeping them seperate, and your data will be safer.

Why do you want to combine them?

You can span two dynamic volumes in diskmgmt.msc, which is built into windows XP.

[Rafjr00]

Can he make chages too C: though? I always thought that once C: was setup and you were booting from it...that was it you could not make any changes too the file system including the size of the drive. I think he is wanting too do RAID 0 but you loose 40gig of the 80gig if you do it with the 40gig. so best thing to do is if you don't want to have to remember to save stuff to a second drive is to copy the 40gig too the 80gig that way C: is on the 80gig. :-)
P.S. when you do that tell it to resize C: too use the whole 80gig of the new drive.

[I.M.O.G.]

Can he make chages too C: though? I always thought that once C: was setup and you were booting from it...that was it you could not make any changes too the file system including the size of the drive. I think he is wanting too do RAID 0 but you loose 40gig of the 80gig if you do it with the 40gig. so best thing to do is if you don't want to have to remember to save stuff to a second drive is to copy the 40gig too the 80gig that way C: is on the 80gig. :-)
P.S. when you do that tell it to resize C: too use the whole 80gig of the new drive.

He'd have to flop the data around, but I honestly don't know myself why he couldn't do it. He could format the second drive as a dynamic volume, save an image to it, format the first drive as a dynamic volume, restore from the image, span the drives and it would be just like one big drive. There is likely a technicality in there somewhere, as I haven't done it before, but this should basically be able to be done like this more or less I think.

He doesn't want to do raid, he just wants the two drives to act as one.

It's a bad idea though, and not the way he should do it.

[Rafjr00]

Ya I know he does not want to do RAID 0, but what he is talking about is RAID 0. All the systems I ever installed a larger hard drive in at the shop I worked in what we did was copy the older drive over too the newer one and then if the customer wanted we would either wipe the old one and set it up as a second drive or give them the old drive too store as a backup. I think other then RAID 0 he is stuck with having a C: drive and another one.

[I.M.O.G.]

No, it's not RAID 0 AFAIK... He wants to simply span the drives and doing so will not require the drives to both write data at the same time and he would also not lose any space on either drive by simply spanning, as he would lose space with RAID 0. I think you might be confusing spanning with striping:

# Spanned Volume - A dynamic volume that uses disk space on more than one physical disk. If there is more than one dynamic disk the size of the spanned volume can be increased by extending it onto the additional dynamic disk.

# Striped Volume - A dynamic volume that stores data in stripes across two or more physical hard drives. Striped volumes are noted for very fast performance but the downside, which can be substantial, is that if one of the disks in the stripe set fails the entire volume is lost. (http://www.theeldergeek.com/hard_drives_10.htm)

The utilities to do this are all built right into XP pro, and that eldergeek link displays how to span the drives basically. You still may be right though about doing this with a boot partition, I'm sure someone will post and let us know exactly why or why not on this.

I'd still like to know why the original poster wants to do this. :-/

[diehrd]

Converting a basic disk to dynamicWindows XP Setup and Disk Management ensures that disks initialized by Windows XP Professional can be converted to dynamic disks. Dynamic disks provide features that basic disks do not, such as the ability to create multidisk volumes, such as striped, mirrored, and RAID-5 volumes. Before you convert disks, close any programs that are running on those disks.

After you convert a basic disk into a dynamic disk, any existing partitions on the basic disk become (dynamic) simple volumes. You cannot change the dynamic volumes back to partitions.

Dynamic disks cannot be directly accessed by MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows NT, or Windows XP Home Edition, so you cannot start these operating systems on dynamic disks. However, shared folders on dynamic disks are available across a network to computers running all of these operating systems.

Access to dynamic disks is further restricted by the partition style used on the dynamic disk:

Only x86-based computers running Windows 2000 or Windows XP Professional, or Itanium-based computers running Windows XP 64-bit Edition can access dynamic MBR disks.
Only Itanium-based computers running Windows XP 64-Bit Edition can access dynamic GUID partition table (GPT) disks.
In order to successfully convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk:

Master boot record (MBR) disks must have at least 1 megabyte (MB) of free space at the end of the disk for the dynamic disk database. Disk Management and Setup automatically reserve this free space when creating partitions or logical drives on a disk, but disks with partitions or volumes created by other operating systems might not have this free space available. GUID partition table (GPT) disks do not require 1 MB of unallocated space at the end of the disk. Instead, Disk Management uses space from the Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition to create a separate partition for the dynamic disk database.
GUID partition table (GPT) disks must have contiguous, recognized data partitions with Windows XP file systems on them. If an unrecognized partition (for example, created by another operating system or utility that used partition type GUIDs not supported by Windows XP 64-Bit Edition) exists between two recognized partitions, you cannot convert the GPT disk to dynamic.
The disk must not be removable media. You cannot convert removable media devices to dynamic volumes. Removable media devices can contain only primary partitions.
The disk must not be in a portable computer. Windows XP Professional and Windows XP do not support dynamic disks in portable computers.
The sector size must be 512 bytes. Otherwise, you cannot convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk. You can use the chkdsk command to determine the disk's sector size.
Other conversion considerations
Converting a basic disk to a dynamic disk also impacts the following:

Reinstalling Windows XP Professional. You can perform a fresh installation of Windows XP Professional on a dynamic volume only if that volume was converted from a basic volume and it retained an entry in the partition table. Simple volumes converted from basic disks on Windows XP Professional do not have an entry in the partition table unless they were system or boot volumes prior to conversion. This information is required to perform fresh installations of Windows XP Professional on dynamic volumes.
Boot and system partitions. You can convert a basic disk containing the system or boot partitions to a dynamic disk. After the disk is converted, these partitions become simple system or boot volumes (after restarting the computer). You cannot mark an existing dynamic volume as active. You can convert a basic disk containing the boot partition (which contains the Windows XP Professional operating system) to a dynamic disk. After the disk is converted, the boot partition becomes a simple boot volume (after restarting the computer).
Conversion failures. If you convert a boot disk, or if a volume or partition is in use on the disk you attempt to convert, you must restart the computer for the conversion to succeed. If any of the following conditions occur, the conversion can fail after the computer restarts:
If you disconnect all existing dynamic disks while the computer is restarting.
If you replace a disk or set of disks to be converted while the computer is restarting. (Disk Management detects that the disk has changed and the conversion may fail.)
If you change the disk layout of a disk to be converted.
If the disk has I/O errors during the conversion.
Mirroring the boot and system volumes. After you convert the disk containing the boot and system partitions to a dynamic disk, you can mirror the boot and system volumes onto another dynamic disk. Then, if the disk containing the boot and system volumes fails, you can start the computer from the disk containing the mirrors of these volumes.
When the conversion takes place. System and boot partitions are converted to dynamic volumes after the computer is restarted. All other partitions and basic volumes are converted immediately. However, if a partition or basic volume on the disk that you are converting is in use, an event known as "force dismounting" occurs, which means that any programs using the volume are automatically disconnected. If the volume cannot be force dismounted (for example, there is an active paging file on the volume), then the disk conversion does not complete until you restart the computer.
Other operating systems. If you convert a disk with a partition that contains an operating system other than Windows 2000 or Windows XP Professional, you will not be able to start the computer from that operating system after the conversion.
Reverting back to basic disks. After you convert a basic disk into a dynamic disk, you cannot change the dynamic volumes back to partitions. Instead, you must delete all dynamic volumes on the disk and then use the Convert To Basic Disk command.

[germanjulian]

hey diehrd die you copy and paste that from somewhere??

:)

[diehrd]

Of course I did..Have you ever seen me post in such a profesional way ? LOl not happening I am just some normal laid back geek ..No way I could have that information stored in my brain...Go to Disk managment and look at help then look up dynamic disks...

[Rafjr00]

And there is the answer. Humm I wonder what the advantage to going through all of that is? Guess that is why I never heard of it...it is something new :D ...must play with it and see what it does hehe

[kct2]

umm...when you cut and paste something and don't tell where it is cut and paste from it is called something...what is it...oh yeah...plagiarism.

Spanning volumes is not a good idea, it is alot like RAID-0, but without the performance improvement, just the bad parts. And it should not be possible to span the system volume.

[Rafjr00]

that is what i thought...windows likes too keep its playground too itself.

[Sonny]

hi, i had a 40 gb harddrive and it was kinda full so i bought another 80gb harddrive. but now i have two drives..like i have a C: drive and a F: drive. is there a way to combine both of the harddrives so it could just be one big harddrive(c:). is there some program i could use? or any other method. i found something in the microsoft website but it says you have to back up the your stuff. i don't have a place to back up 40gb stuff?..i'd appreciate it if anyone can help me out. thanks.

As mentioned earlier & probably what you have read at the M$ website, you can span the 2 HDD to appear as one. The backup suggestion is to make sure that if ever the procedure fails due to whatever reason M$ will not be responsible for your loss, although it is smart to do a backup of critical data all the time.

The mentality of most of our forum members, at least as I would like to think of them, is to do frequent backups. Since most of us have the habit of pushing our systems over the edge to find out the limits, a backup is very important to us. As for regular users you will still want 2 HDDs to act independently if that’s all you have, data protection should come first & foremost.

[ElectroX]

Partition Magic 8 can do what you are asking. Should be pretty painless too.