2 hard drives

selfbuilder1

I have two hard drives on my computer. They show up as two separate drives. Is there any way of getting them to show as one hard drive, thanks.

darealtulip

selfbuilder1 wrote: »

I have two hard drives on my computer. They show up as two separate drives. Is there any way of getting them to show as one hard drive, thanks.

I really don't know but why do you want that?

Outkast_IRE

I would lean towards no as they are two phyically different drives and having the two under one drive letter would result in problems i would imagine , and why would you do this hard drives are pretty cheap at the mo just buy a bigger single drive.

Spear

selfbuilder1 wrote: »

I have two hard drives on my computer. They show up as two separate drives. Is there any way of getting them to show as one hard drive, thanks.

RAID or JBOD.

T-Bird

Some PCs come with 1 drive with 2 partitions making it look like 2 drives. If this is what you mean then you can copy/backup data from 2nd partition and remove it and then extend the 1st partition.

DanGlee

Sounds like you need RAID.

Google "RAID Controller Card" Not sure if the OS will have it build in? I'd be inclined to so it doesn't, I've never tried it as I bough a Lacie 2TB HDD with RAID

ScumLord

You may not need a controller card allot of motherboards have raid built in.

Raid won't turn it into one big partition though, you'll have option but raid is more a way of ensuring you don't lose data and getting a speed increase.

I think It's better to have a separate partition. I have all my files and documents on a separate hard drive from my operating system. I could take it out and plug it into another pc if I wanted without affecting the computer much.

Gadgetman496

JBOD (for "just a bunch of disks," or sometimes "just a bunch of drives") is a derogatory term - the official term is "spanning" - used to refer to a computer's hard disks that haven't been configured according to the RAID (for "redundant array of independent disks") system to increase fault tolerance and improve data access performance.

The RAID system stores the same data redundantly on multiple disks that nevertheless appear to the operating system as a single disk. Although, JBOD also makes the disks appear to be a single one, it accomplishes that by combining the drives into one larger logical one. JBOD doesn't deliver any advantages over using separate disks independently and doesn't provide any of the fault tolerance or performance benefits of RAID.


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lmimmfn

gadgetman496 wrote: »

The RAID system stores the same data redundantly on multiple disks that nevertheless appear to the operating system as a single disk.
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Striped Raid config doesnt do that and in fact is worse( data integrity wise ) than using 2 drives seperately or JBOD but of course is nearly double the speed.

old_aussie

Found on microsoft.

Using the Windows interface

1. Open Computer Management (Local).
2. In the console tree, click Computer Management (Local), click Storage, and then click Disk Management.
3. Right-click the simple or spanned volume you want to extend, click Extend Volume, and then follow the instructions on your screen.

Notes

• To perform this procedure on a local computer, you must be a member of the Backup Operators group or Administrators group on the local computer, or you must have been delegated the appropriate authority. To perform this procedure remotely, you must be a member of the Backup Operators group or Administrators group on the remote computer. If the computer is joined to a domain, members of the Domain Admins group might be able to perform this procedure. As a security best practice, consider using Run as to perform this procedure.
• To open Computer Management, click Start, click Control Panel, double-click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Computer Management.
• You can extend a volume only if it does not have a file system or if it is formatted using the NTFS file system. You cannot extend volumes formatted using FAT or FAT32.
• You cannot extend a system volume, boot volume, striped volume, mirrored volume, or RAID-5 volume.
• You can extend simple or extended volumes that are not system or boot volumes, as long as there is available disk space. This includes volumes created as dynamic volumes or created as basic volumes and then converted to dynamic on Windows XP Professional or Windows Server 2003 operating systems.
• If you upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP Professional or Windows Server 2003 operating systems, you cannot extend a simple or spanned volume that was originally created as a basic volume and converted to a dynamic volume on Windows 2000.
• You can extend a simple volume onto additional dynamic disks to create a spanned volume. Spanned volumes cannot be mirrored.
• If you extend a spanned volume, you cannot delete any portion of it without deleting the entire spanned volume.