01rich01

Hi, I've pretty much run out of hard drive space. I was wondering if I could buy an extra hard drive and insted of having an extra drive in my computer, could you somehow tell windows to see both drives as one. I think it's possible with raid configurations but I don't really want the hassel of formating ect (thats if you need to?)

Cromewell

It can be done but the effort of redoing everything so you have a partition that spans both disks isn't worth it. Plus you'd need somewhere to store everything will you recreate the partition as a dynamic disk. It is also possible with a RAID0 array but again, you'd need to copy all your data somewhere while you recreate your partition. And it has the added bonus of destroying the data on both drives if one fails.

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01rich01

In that case, do you know if/how you can change the default installation path in vista? and is it wise to have two of the same hard drives, or can you mix and match?
Thanks.

konsole

is the drive that small or do you have that much stuff or both?
have you tried cleaning out files you dont need?

if the drive is under 100 gb you may just want to get a larger drive. My dad's hard drive is only 60 gb but he doesnt have alot of stuff on it. So even just 20 gb free is enough for him.

01rich01

Mainly I have too much stuff, everytime I want to install something, i have to reluctantly delete something. I currently have a 320GB drive. If I buy another drive is it just a case of plug and play? Or do I have to format my current drive as well?

fmw

My advice is to replace the hard drive with a larger one. Gen the operating system from scratch and load your programs from scratch. Then copy over your data files. You'll be amazed at how much more efficient things are on the new drive. You can then format and add the old drive as a backup for data files. You will be amazed at how much garbage you have on your drive that you never use.

I do this every couple of years even on systems that are running perfectly with plenty of room. I view it as "software maintenance." At the 4 year mark, if I'm going to continue to use the computer, I replace the drive itself. All drives break eventually. It's better if they don't break while you're using them. Replacing them doesn't guarantee they won't break while you're using them but it certainly puts the odds more in your favor.