using 2 hard drives as one?

[craig7]

i got 2hdd's in my computer and my one with windows and all of my programs is 98% full, my other one isnt, can i use a partition software to merge the two hdd's? if so are there any free ones?

 

[MDS]

PartionMagic is a disk drive utility that I've used in the past. I think it is now owned by Symantec and comes with one of their total PC maintenance programs (Norton 360?), but it can also be purchased separately. I don't know offhand if there any free programs available.

But how are the two drives configured now? As one Primary partition on one drive and then an Extended partition on the other drive (so there are multiple drive letters)? Is the intention to use two separate drives but have them seen by the OS as one single Primary partition?

 

[craig7]

i curently have three drive letters c: my main hdd 36gb with windows installed d: my 2nd hdd 74.5gb empty e: a 1gb partition on my main hdd

i want to to just have two c: and my backup partition
i want to merge c: and d:
can i do this?

and unfortunately i dont have any norton cds, the last one i have is from 2005, my mom just downloads norton now -.- and its a real pain to install it on other computers

 

[MDS]

i curently have three drive letters c: my main hdd 36gb with windows installed d: my 2nd hdd 74.5gb empty e: a 1gb partition on my main hdd

i want to to just have two c: and my backup partition
i want to merge c: and d:
can i do this?

No, you cannot have two separate drives that appear as one drive letter.

PartitionMagic and tools like it will allow you to resize existing partitions or change them from primary to extended. It would allow you to remove the 1 GB partition and merge it into the 36 GB partition, thus making one single 37 GB partition. You'd then have one C drive and the second hard drive would become D (and would be an Extended partition). But that would only gain 1 GB of extra space.

I take it the problem is simply that the drive that currently contains Windows is out of space for installing more applications. You could 'swap' the two drives so that the larger 75 GB drive becomes the Primary with Windows and applications and use the current smaller 37 GB drive for backup or other purposes.

To do so, you'd need to make a disc image of the current drive, format the second drive and make it a Primary partition, and then copy the disc image to the second drive. You could then format the old drive and make it an extended partition. So the larger drive would become the primary (c and the current smaller drive would become the extended partition (d.

Norton Ghost is one such tool that can do that.

 

[krzywica]

No, you cannot have two separate drives that appear as one drive letter.

Yes you can. Its called a spanned volume and both disks have to be set to dynamic mode for this to work. You will likely not be able to do this though as your C drive was likely created with a different partition type. This however is not advisable to do as if one of your drives fail you lose the data on both drives. If you are wanting to locate all the data on one disk I would create a Symlink to the second drive or vice versa. You can use Junction Link Magic to do this.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Yes you can. Its called a spanned volume and both disks have to be set to dynamic mode for this to work. You will likely not be able to do this though as your C drive was likely created with a different partition type. This however is not advisable to do as if one of your drives fail you lose the data on both drives. If you are wanting to locate all the data on one disk I would create a Symlink to the second drive or vice versa. You can use Junction Link Magic to do this.

couldn't say this better myself...
My case in point - I bought 50gb ssd which I installed OS and only small basic apps, all big apps/games and ALL data (my documents etc) goto regular big hardrive. Probably sym links is what you looking for

 

[stealthrt]

You can do that if you put them both on a RAID.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124035

Although i'm not sure how that will work since you already have an OS on one of them and, to my knowledge, when you have RAID setup before installing an OS you would have to give it Drivers before installing the OS.

But the most important thing to do BEFORE doing anything to it is backing it up! I'm sure you dont want to lose all those things on your primary hard drive so whatever you choose to do, backup the drive first

David

 

[Socratesx]

You can do that if you put them both on a RAID.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124035

Although i'm not sure how that will work since you already have an OS on one of them and, to my knowledge, when you have RAID setup before installing an OS you would have to give it Drivers before installing the OS.

But the most important thing to do BEFORE doing anything to it is backing it up! I'm sure you dont want to lose all those things on your primary hard drive so whatever you choose to do, backup the drive first

David

Yes he can do it but RAID will delete everything that is on the member disks. Also It would be better to do it if the hard drives have the same capacity.

 

[jinjuku]

Just get a disk imaging product like Ghost or Acronis TruImage...

 

[Hemlock]

Careful now, not all OS's can Boot from a Spanned volume. I think Win7 is the first.


I would go with the imaging Idea, RAID is good but probably unnecessarily complex for the Situation.

I would buy a BIG HD

I would Image the old Smaller Drive onto the Larger Drive, then boot from the larger Drive.
Reformat the old Drive and Set it as a back up Drive with an automatic Backup Routine. Microsofts Sync Toy is free and good.


In the longterm you need to free your data from the Installation. If your HD is full you're probably due for a fresh OS install.

Every year or so your OS should be reinstalled *ducks*

 

[digicidal]

In the longterm you need to free your data from the Installation. If your HD is full you're probably due for a fresh OS install.

Every year or so your OS should be reinstalled *ducks*

You ducking because you said "every year"? I probably do a reinstall every 6-9 months on something around my house - well at least things that get lots of software installed/uninstalled on them. The linux server and my wife's iMac are the only exceptions to this - although my audio server and HTPC don't because the software never changes and they aren't even used for web browsing unless it's to download an updated driver.

With drives as cheap as they are now - I really can't come up with a reason to struggle with space unless it's a situation like BSA mentioned - where you have a small capacity SSD for speed - and something else for space. Otherwise I regularly see 1TB drives going for $50-75 at Fry's when they have a sale - and even at full price they're less than $100.

Also, if you are looking for a good disk imaging program - and can't afford Norton Ghost... take a look at PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost). It's a free, bootable linux environment that makes images (including bootable ones). I use it all the time to backup/restore workstations at my office.

The main reason I reiterate the "NEW HD" suggestion from Hemlock is that based on the sizes of your drives (which appear to be a 40GB and an 80GB) - I have to also assume that they date back to ~2004 and perhaps earlier if they came in the computer when it was purchased.

I'm glad to see you're planning backups because they may come in handy soon.

 

[Hemlock]

That makes two of us.
I generally get bombarded with replies of "Defrag" and "Registry Pruner".

The reality is that drives age and die. The only reason to spend so much energy keeping them alive was cost. With storage as cheap as it is there is no reason not to have some sort of dynamic back up process or even a RAID 5 configuration for safety.

I use freeNAS which is fantastic but requires a certain level of knowledge to implement.

The reality is that everyone that has a router should have some method of offline storage, even if it's an external HD connected to a router.