How can I make it so windows sees my 150 gig and my 40 gig as a 190 gig?

bamhm182

bamhm182

New Member
Okay, I've got both the hard drives in my computer and windows can see them both, but I was wondering if I could make it see them both as one(ex., right now when I go into my computer it says C: 40 Gb and D: 150 GB, is where a way to make it say C: 190 GB?) I think programs like partition Magic and stuff can only partition 1 hard drive, and can't conjoin 2, but I just wanted to ask to make sure. If there's no way to do it, than I'll just make the 150 GB the one for my good computer and make the 40 GB the one for my old Dell.
 
There's a setup called RAID that allows you to do this with a pair of identically sized drives. I don't know of anything that allows you to do what you want... There might be software to do so out there, but it's fairly unpractical seeing as they are so different.

I THINK it's possible to make say a 40G partition on your 160G and then combine it with your 40G as a standard RAID though windows, but I've never tried this.
 
If the drives are ide type drives you are stuck with two drives seen. With either a SATA or RAID array you are essentially making a mirror image of one drive with the other to see one partition cover both drives. You can always reassign the drive letter for the second drive to see it as the E, F, G, H, I, etc. if you want the cd or dvd drive seen as the D drive.
 
This might help...

** I was wondering the same thing a while ago and found this. Maybe it will help you out!

Info came from Wikipedia

Concatenation (JBOD)

Although a concatenation of disks (also called JBOD, or "Just a Bunch of Disks") is not one of the numbered RAID levels, it is a popular method for combining multiple physical disk drives into a single virtual one. As the name implies, disks are merely concatenated together, end to beginning, so they appear to be a single large disk.

In this sense, concatenation is akin to the reverse of partitioning. Whereas partitioning takes one physical drive and creates two or more logical drives, JBOD uses two or more physical drives to create one logical drive.

In that it consists of an Array of Independent Disks (no redundancy), it can be thought of as a distant relation to RAID. JBOD is sometimes used to turn several odd-sized drives into one useful drive. Therefore, JBOD could use a 3 GB, 15 GB, 5.5 GB, and 12 GB drive to combine into a logical drive at 35.5 GB, which is often more useful than the individual drives separately.

JBOD is similar to the widely used Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and Logical Storage Manager (LSM) in UNIX and UNIX-based operating systems (OS). JBOD is useful for OSs which do not support LVM/LSM (like MS-Windows, although Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP Pro, and Windows 2000 support software JBOD, known as spanning dynamic disks). The difference between JBOD and LVM/LSM is that the address remapping between the logical address of the concatenated device and the physical address of the disc is done by the RAID hardware instead of the OS kernel as it is LVM/LSM.

One advantage JBOD has over RAID 0 is in the case of drive failure. Whereas in RAID 0, failure of a single drive will usually result in the loss of all data in the array, in a JBOD array only the data on the affected drive is lost, and the data on surviving drives will remain readable. However, JBOD does not carry the performance benefits which are associated with RAID 0.

Note: Some Raid cards (Ex. 3ware) use JBOD to refer to configuring drives without raid features including concatenation. Each drive shows up separately in the OS.

Note: Many Linux distributions refer to JBOD as "linear mode" or "append mode." The Mac OS 10.4 implementation - called a "Concatenated Disk Set" - does NOT leave the user with any usable data on the remaining drives if one drive fails in a "Concatenated Disk Set," although the disks do have the write performance documented in the illustration above.
 
okay, thanks, I think I'm just going to put the 150 in my computer, than put the 40 in my Dell and give it to my brother.
 
I just have one more question about this, I am trying to get all my music and videos onto the 150 gig, but I have about 75 GB of stuff, I was wondering how I would go about saving all over that stuff, I have a DVD/CD burner, but that'd take A LOT of CDs. Is there a place I can go on the internet that would let me upload about 75 GB onto it, than download it? If I copied all of the files in the C: (the 40 gig) to the empty D: (150 gig) would I be able to set the 150 gig to master and boot it up?
 
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okay, thanks, but I don't think we have enough money for that right now, I think I might ask my friend if I can borrow his 30 gig mp3 player, than use my 40 gig, and delete about 5 gigs of stuff, either that or delete my isos for my psp, I don't know, somehow I think I'm going to use the 40 gig to move all of the stuff over, so I might be able to compress it really tight. Do you know of a program that can compress about 75 GB of stuff to less than 40? If you don't know one that's that good, what's the best one that you know of?
 
if you have a router or even an extra ethernet cable anywhere in your house you could create a temporary network and transfer them like that. Or, you could use aim and transfer them between computers using the file sharing option built into the IMS.

However, both methods described above would force you to have the HDDs in two seperate workign computers and powered on. The aim method's speed would also depend on your internet speed, although if you use a router aim would automatically sense your LAN and speed up the transfer a bit. The temporary network solution, however, wouldnt rely on your internet connection, unless you wanted it to.
 
If that was a dvd burner you could use about 7 or 8 dvd rewritable disks to drag the files onto those. Which drive was the host drive? the 40gb or the 150gb? If the larger drive was already the boot drive you wouldn't have to do anything. It would now be the single master.
 
I think it'd be easiest for me to just make 7 or 8 dvds. I have 4 rewritables, and 3 writeables, so I can put about 30 gigs on the dvds and 40 on the hard drive.
 
Drag and drop through two open Windows Explorer windows will see files moved from one drive to the next in less time then fiddling with removable media placing them in the drive and removal after each disk is filled or burned. And then you have to repeat the process with each disk to see files copied to the other drive that may not have been written or burned good to media.

With two Windows Explorer windows open one for each drive you simply highlight the files and folders on the source drive and drag them into the window for the destination drive. That's one reason why they call it "Windows"!
 
lol. but.... would he really be thinking about burnign cds if both drives were already in the same case? I thought he was contemplating puttin them in the same case but decided agaisnt it.
Yes, if both drives are already in the same case and installed, just drag and drop the files you want from one drive to the other.
 
If Windows is up and running already on the 150gb as mentioned earlier the files are already there. The 40gb is simply installed in the other case. The only time for using the blank media would be if the drive was lacking Windows and removable media was used for temporary storage. Then if there was a need for repartitiioning and reformatting the drive by the installer the files are simply copied back afterwards. The question that should be asked here is does the 150gb already have Windows on it or was it used for storage only?
 
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