I need a computer genius!

[Leopold BUTTERS]

Does anyone here know how i can combine 2 HDD together? My C drive is almost full but i have an empty E drive, is there anyone i can make my E drive part of my C drive so the data is just shared between the 2? Thanks.

One other question. My laptop no matter what i put in the USB drives never reconizes anything and always prompts me to install drivers. Even for my Ipod it asks this, now is there a way i can stop this because my PC never asks for any drivers and just recognizes what i put in it right away.

[dadkins]

Originally Posted by Leopold BUTTERS

Does anyone here know how i can combine 2 HDD together? My C drive is almost full but i have an empty E drive, is there anyone i can make my E drive part of my C drive so the data is just shared between the 2? Thanks.

Only if you have or get a RAID controller(HW or SW) and go for RAID 0.
I have a laptop here with two 100GB drives in RAID 0 that shows up as, and acts as a single 200GB drive - but they/it runs WAY faster than the single drives themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redunda...ependent_disks

[rpneuss]

Originally Posted by Leopold BUTTERS

Does anyone here know how i can combine 2 HDD together? My C drive is almost full but i have an empty E drive, is there anyone i can make my E drive part of my C drive so the data is just shared between the 2? Thanks.

I don't think its possible, but i'll wait for people with more harddrive knowledge than me to answer.

[rpneuss]

Originally Posted by dadkins

Only if you have or get a RAID controller and go for RAID 0.
I have a laptop here with two 100GB drives in RAID 0 and show up as, and act as a single 200GB drive - but they/it runs WAY faster than the single drives themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redunda...ependent_disks

Ah yes, I forgot about the whole raid array thing. Theres your answer Leopold.

[Leopold BUTTERS]

Okay, so I don't really understand what this RAID thing is. Do i need a special harddrive to do this or is there software i have to download?

[Blu Kreme]

You can't do any raid array as it is now. Only way you can do a raid array is having two drives setup for it - that DO NOT HAVE DATA on them when setup.

If you setup a raid array now, you will lose all data off your c drive. Also, raid 0 is useless and dangerous for home users. If one drive fails, you lose all your data. There is no redundancy. Raid setups for the AVERAGE home user - are overkill.

Best thing to do right now, buy a larger hd and clone it to the new larger drive. That is your best bet! A lot of companies now include software that let you do that. Get a new bigger drive, use the old drive as a "backup" drive. So now you have 2 places to store things in case one fails.

[dadkins]

Originally Posted by Leopold BUTTERS

Okay, so I don't really understand what this RAID thing is. Do i need a special harddrive to do this or is there software i have to download?

Best I can offer you without Googling the subject myself is in that Wiki link I provided above.

My AR190G has Intel Matrix Controller as part of the chipset to achieve the RAID 0.



It appears that, depending on OS, software may be able to emulate(?) RAID 0.

Sorry I cannot be of more help.

[Leopold BUTTERS]

Originally Posted by Blu Kreme

You can't do any raid array as it is now. Only way you can do a raid array is having two drives setup for it - that DO NOT HAVE DATA on them when setup.

If you setup a raid array now, you will lose all data off your c drive. Also, raid 0 is useless and dangerous for home users. If one drive fails, you lose all your data. There is no redundancy. Raid setups for the AVERAGE home user - are overkill.

Best thing to do right now, buy a larger hd and clone it to the new larger drive. That is your best bet! A lot of companies now include software that let you do that. Get a new bigger drive, use the old drive as a "backup" drive. So now you have 2 places to store things in case one fails.

alright. thanks for the help, its very much appreciated.

[dadkins]

Originally Posted by Blu Kreme

You can't do any raid array as it is now. Only way you can do a raid array is having two drives setup for it - that DO NOT HAVE DATA on them when setup.

If you setup a raid array now, you will lose all data off your c drive. Also, raid 0 is useless and dangerous for home users. If one drive fails, you lose all your data. There is no redundancy. Raid setups for the AVERAGE home user - are overkill.

Best thing to do right now, buy a larger hd and clone it to the new larger drive. That is your best bet! A lot of companies now include software that let you do that. Get a new bigger drive, use the old drive as a "backup" drive. So now you have 2 places to store things in case one fails.

Ok, and if you have a single drive and it fails, is not all your data lost as well?
RAID 0 increases performance if nothing else!

If OP was to go the RAID approach, backing up the data then doing RAID and replacing data would work.

I do agree though, just getting a larger HDD and cloning is the easiest, probably the best, approach.

[Seeking_Alpha]

Why would you need to combine them? Just start saving new stuff on your E drive.

[Blu Kreme]

Originally Posted by dadkins

Ok, and if you have a single drive and it fails, is not all your data lost as well?
RAID 0 increases performance if nothing else!

If OP was to go the RAID approach, backing up the data then doing RAID and replacing data would work.

I do agree though, just getting a larger HDD and cloning is the easiest, probably the best, approach.

Get a new bigger drive, use the old drive as a "backup" drive. So now you have 2 places to store things in case one fails.

[dadkins]

Originally Posted by Blu Kreme

raid 0 is useless and dangerous for home users. If one drive fails, you lose all your data.

Same happens when one has a single drive - the comment about RAID was unwarranted.

I agreed with you about getting a new bigger drive. Read that last line in the post you quoted.

Originally Posted by dadkins

I do agree though, just getting a larger HDD and cloning is the easiest, probably the best, approach.

[tron3]

If the E: drive is part of the physical C: drive then Partition Magic can extend the size of the C: Drive.

[trshaw]

alla peanut butter and jelly sandwiches...poof...your E: drive is now part of your C: Drive

1) why would you need to make the two drives into one partition?
ex. having 1 500Gb drive or 2 250gb drives offer no advantages and will infact lower performance.

2) If you are worried about space, drag and drop files onto the other drive. You can also just install any new programs to the other drive.

Unless you are talking about sharing a single file across multiple drives, I see no reason why you would need to create a single drive from two separate drives.

Windows doesn't care about the physical hardware, it sees everything as large chunks of addressable space, for example a single large drive with multiple partitions operates the same (relatively) as multiple drives and are accessed same way.

[DarkClown]

...apparanetly none who have responded are.

I'd agree that one huge C: drive is not necessarily the best way to go. However that is not to say it isn't possible. Or perhaps I should say it is possible to make both drives appears to the user as one huge C: drive.

If this were not his System volume (bootable drive) I'd say he could just span the volume from the Windows Disk Manager. Of course if you are a cumputer genius then you already know that will not work for the system volume.

However you could set up the new hard drive as a folder mounted to the original drive. In essence the new hard drive appears to be a folder inside of C:

Using Disk Manager create a partition on the new hard drive. Then instead of assigning a drive letter such as D: to the new partition assign it to an an empty folder on C:.\
One note, your drives must be NTFS for this to work.

[dadkins]

Originally Posted by DarkClown

...apparanetly none who have responded are.

Ok, I agree!

[El Negro]

I havent messed with partition Magic but can check it out

* Partitions hard drive
* Create, resize, copy partitions
* Run multiple operating systems

Features

* Divides hard drive into two or more partitions
* Runs multiple operating systems on the same PC
* BootMagic™ makes it easy to switch between operating systems
* Copy, move, resize, split, or merge partitions
* Guides you through the partitioning process
* Easy to find, copy and paste files in both Windows® and Linux® partitions
* Create and modify partitions up to 300GB*
* Supports USB 2.0, USB 1.1, and FireWire® external drives**
* Supports and converts partitions among FAT, FAT32, NTFS, Ext2, and Ext3 file systems
* Enlarge an NTFS partition without restarting computer
* Resizes NTFS system clusters to the most effective size




http://www.symantec.com/norton/partitionmagic

[Seeking_Alpha]

Originally Posted by El Negro

I havent messed with partition Magic but can check it out

* Partitions hard drive
* Create, resize, copy partitions
* Run multiple operating systems

Features

* Divides hard drive into two or more partitions
* Runs multiple operating systems on the same PC
* BootMagic™ makes it easy to switch between operating systems
* Copy, move, resize, split, or merge partitions
* Guides you through the partitioning process
* Easy to find, copy and paste files in both Windows® and Linux® partitions
* Create and modify partitions up to 300GB*
* Supports USB 2.0, USB 1.1, and FireWire® external drives**
* Supports and converts partitions among FAT, FAT32, NTFS, Ext2, and Ext3 file systems
* Enlarge an NTFS partition without restarting computer
* Resizes NTFS system clusters to the most effective size




http://www.symantec.com/norton/partitionmagic

Haven't used partition magic, but I think GParted is better cause it's free.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/index.php

[DarkClown]

Originally Posted by Seeking_Alpha

Haven't used partition magic, but I think GParted is better cause it's free.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/index.php

Free is good. But best as I know, neither of these software apps can create a bootable partition that spans more than one physical hard drive. If you want to do it with any other partion, not a problem. The only way I know of to create a bootable partition using more than one disc is RAID

[Blu Kreme]

You all are forgetting a very big point here...

If the OP has to ASK what to do - more than likely the complicated answers that have been given, are not the solution. Not that the OP is dumb or anything, he may not be as computer literate as you or I.

As all things go - the simplest solution is always the best.