Shoutbox

My computer has 2 x 250 GB hard drives, but I only initially started with 250 GB. How can I add the other 250 GB onto my exsisting memory without creating a new disk drive?

Thanks.

Your question is somewhat unclear, so I am just going to state what you can do.

1) You can format the previously unused hard drive and assign it a new drive letter.  For example, if you already have drives C: and D:, it would become E:.  It sounds like that is what you don't want to do.

2) You can format the previously unused hard drive and map it as a folder under an existing drive.  For example, it could become C:\Music.  Note, however, that doing this doesn't truly merge the drives, it just links them under that path.  You will be able to put 250GB worth of files in the linked folder and its subfolders, which will go on the second drive.  However, everything else on the first drive will remain constrained to its size, so this is not quite like having a single 500GB volume.

3) The only option that will give you a fully functional illusion of a singe 500GB volume is a RAID-0 stripe set.  There a couple ways to set this up, either through Windows or through RAID support on your motherboard, but none of these are non-destructive.  You will have to back up the data you want to keep and reformat.  There is another drawback to choosing this option -- it doubles your chances of losing data to a hard drive failure, since now you have two drives that can fail, either completely destroying the integrity of the volume.

Think it over and respond by posting which you want to do, and I am sure you will receive more specific instructions after having it narrowed down.

Im thinking more of option one. I want to add the unused 250 GB to the C: drive that is currently using the other 250 GB.

You can merge the two drives, but the second drive needs to be empty, otherwise a lot of data can be lost.

You can do this through disk administrator, press windows key + r, then type in "compmgmt.msc" in this window, click "Disk Management and the window will appear, have a fiddle around with this to try and do it.

I don't have 2 physical drives so I can't try it out.

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Originally posted by LoochTheMan
Im thinking more of option one. I want to add the unused 250 GB to the C: drive that is currently using the other 250 GB.

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you're thinking of option 3.

Just remember though, if you choose this setup and one of your drives goes bad on you, you lose data from BOTH drives. Making a spanned drive is a similar configuration, but data on one drive will only be made inaccessible when the other fails, it can be recovered.

more info from Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314343

•    A spanned volume is created from free disk space that is linked together from multiple disks. You can extend a spanned volume onto a maximum of 32 disks. A spanned volume cannot be mirrored and is not fault-tolerant.
•    A striped volume is a volume whose data is interleaved across two or more physical disks. The data on this type of volume is allocated alternately and evenly to each of the physical disks. A striped volume cannot be mirrored or extended and is not fault-tolerant. Striping is also known as RAID-0.

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Originally posted by traxor
You can merge the two drives, but the second drive needs to be empty, otherwise a lot of data can be lost.

You can do this through disk administrator, press windows key + r, then type in "compmgmt.msc" in this window, click "Disk Management and the window will appear, have a fiddle around with this to try and do it.

I don't have 2 physical drives so I can't try it out.

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My second drive hasnt been used so it is empty. If someone knows how to do this definitively that would be helpful because I dont want to  loose data that I already have or screw up my computer.

quote:

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Originally posted by LoochTheMan
My second drive hasnt been used so it is empty. If someone knows how to do this definitively that would be helpful because I dont want to  loose data that I already have or screw up my computer.

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The problem with Traxor's suggestion is that you can't extend the boot volume, even if you convert it to dynamic.  So, you can only do that if you have partitioned your drive -- you would then be able to exted the second, non-boot partition.

What you could potentially do if you have a single partition is the following:

1) Create a dynamic volume on the second, presently empty drive;

2) Move all your data files to the new volume; leave only Windows and the installed programs on the first drive;

3) Shrink the partition on the first drive using some partition resizing software;

4) Convert the first drive to a dynamic disk and extend the new volume on the second drive with the now unused space on the first drive.

The result would be one smaller volume for Windows and applications (let's say C:, 100GB) and one big volume for all your data, spanning both drives (let's say D:, 400GB).  Many (including myself) prefer to partition their disks that way instead of single volume, anyway.

If you do this correctly and nothing goes wrong, you should lose no data -- however, backup, at least of your critical files, is still highly recommended.  Resizing "accidents" are rare, but not unheard of. 

Edit: all of the above assumes you have Windows XP Professional or equivalent Vista edition.  XP Home doesn't support dynamic disks and I'd assume the lesser Vista editions don't, either.

Lets say I disregard my request.

How would I go about just creating another drive ( I already have c: ) with the remaining 250 GB?

..sorry for being n00bish

quote:

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Originally posted by LoochTheMan
How would I go about just creating another drive ( I already have c: ) with the remaining 250 GB?

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Start, Run, type "diskmgmt.msc", click Ok.  When Disk Management console appears, find your second drive, which should show as all free space -- right click in the free space and create a new volume.  I don't recall the exact verbiage of the menu, but it should be obvious.