I've just installed Windows 7 on my netbook and it has 2 hard drives, a 4GB one and a 16GB one.....I'd like to combine the two so that it shows as just one 20GB one.

From what I've found through searching it looks like it's possible, but I haven't managed to find anything that makes enough sense for me to follow.  I was wondering if someone could either give me instructions, or point me in the direction of a tutorial that explains it well?

Thanks

JBOD RAID would work, but chances of a netbook supporting that are almost 0.

I doubt it is possible with software only. At least not without being messy, Windows wouldn't know what to do with the drive before the software loads.

Most RAID controllers support JBOD, and in theory since it's not really RAID, software could just add the other disk after booting the OS.

Windows Home Server merges all the disks with software doesn't it?

I know XP Pro was able to do a software implementation (presumably business and higher versions of Vista and 7 should as well), but the spanned drive cannot be a system drive (the OS can't boot from it). Unless there's something in the BIOS that supports SPAN/BIG/JBOD, you're out of luck.

4GB and 16GB?  Either you are living in the 90s or you must be using the very first SSDs ever made.  Wow.

The RAID option has been well covered by previous posters and it isn't a great option for you.  There are a couple other ways you can use the smaller 4GB drive that you should consider:

1) It's about the right size for a swap / temporary file drive.  A few Google searches can tell you how to set that up.

2) Starting with Windows 2000, you are not limited to drive letters.  You can attach a volume to any folder on another volume (e.g. "My Documents" under your user profile) and it becomes that folder.  UNIX users will be familiar with this concept.  It can create the user view of having a single file system that you want, but unlike RAID, it's not truly a single volume.  The folder the other drive is mounted as will be limited to the size of that drive and there will be some free space reporting issues (the parent drive won't factor it in when reporting its free space).  Other than that, this is very handy and surprisingly underused.

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Originally posted by Adeptus
4GB and 16GB?  Either you are living in the 90s or you must be using the very first SSDs ever made.  Wow.

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If it's an Eee 901 you're better off upgrading the 16GB SSD. The 4GB isn't really big enough to install Windows 7 cleanly, and the 16GB SSD is pretty damned slow. The recommended options are usually XP on the 4GB and documents and shizz on the 16GB or upgrading the SSD.

I upgraded my 16GB SSD to a Runcore 64GB SSD which is nice and speedy.

As Mnjul said the 901's (and most other Netbooks) do not support RAID of any form

Correct, it's an Eee901....SSD all the way

The 4GB won't let you install Win7 on it, it seems to be running nicely on the 16GB though, I just don't want that other 4GB wasted.  I know they recommend XP on the 4GB, but with updates and stuff it was just maxed out and running like a stunned slug.....and I hate XP now

Not really fussed in getting an upgrade for it, it's not a primary computer, just one I use at work occasionally.

I tried mounting the 4GB as an NTFS folder, but it wouldn't let me add it to an existing folder, only to create it as a new folder.

Looks like I'll just end up leaving it there doing nothing.

Thanks for the help though

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Originally posted by djdannyp
I tried mounting the 4GB as an NTFS folder, but it wouldn't let me add it to an existing folder, only to create it as a new folder.

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How can I move the PageFile onto the other disc?  That sounds like a good plan to me

Start -> Right Click Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Performance (Settings button) -> Advanced -> Change (Virtual Memory)

From here I would assume you set for every drive "No paging file", except the 4GB drive where you'd either set a custom size or system managed size .

2 Options: LVM & software RAID 0.

There are 2 issues with software RAID 0 on the Eee laptop would be that your overall performance would be very limited to your slowest SSD, and your array size would be limited to your smallest SSD. This means that if you have a 4 and a 16, your array would be 8GB. It would also only write at the slower SSD speed.

LVM would definitely give you spanning, and I believe it may be supported by the install media only. Basically your / could use both a 4 and a 16 to give you 20GB and your reads/writes to the 4 would perform at that SSDs speed, and any writes after you use 4GB would be slower. The only issue here is the ordering, if the kernel decided to write to the larger SSD first your performance would be as good as your slower SSD. If that's any good.

It was the "assuming" bit that I got as far as .

I figured that's how it would work, but just wanted to double check really