Two Harddrives act as one? Can it be done?

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Right click "my computer" » "manage" » "drive management"

Rightclick a partition, "make dynamic" (or something similar")

The select a second partition and a wizard will pop-up with different RAID options i think.

I haven't tried it myself.

You can use RAID0 and RAID1 I think, and you can even use RAID5 with an upgrade :confused:

You cannot use a sofware RAID setup to boot from, since its software and has to be initialized/loaded by windows before the system boots.
 
k, here is how dynamic works. Say you have two HDD. HDD 0 and 1 (as the disk manager sees it). HDD 0 is 40GB and HDD1 is 80GB. Now, you can take HDD 0 and HDD 1 and convert them both to Dynamic and you will NOT lose any data (starts as a 'Basic' volume and converts to a 'Dynamic' volume. Now, say you want the remaining 8GB left on HDD 0 and want to combine that with HDD 1, which is empty. All you do is right click on the unallocated space and click on create volume and what you wanna do is "Span", or extend the volume. Now you have drive C: which is 32GB of HDD 0 and a drive D:(or whatever) which is a total of 88GB (8GB from HDD 0 + 80GB of HDD 1). No problem there. Here are the limitations, though...

1. Data that was on originally written to a Basic HDD can NOT be spanned, can be made dynamic, but not spanned. Now, if you got your HDD, changed it to Dynamic, wrote data to it and later decided to span this HDD then you could because it was originally written to a Dynamic disk, but not from data written while it was in its 'Basic' volume structure.

2. The system volume can NOT be spanned, because of the boot/file structure. A spanned volume doesn't use a MBR, instead it uses its own file system (hence the reason basic HDD info wont convert to a spanned volume). Now, if you had taken the HDD and began it as a dynamic volume, no biggie (save the system section, it doesn't count).

3. When doing a spanned/extended volume, it usually wants you to perform a format (it assumes you have a fresh drive to combine to what is left over from a previous drive), but you dont have to do this. If you already have a Dynamic array, than I suggest backing up data before trying this, as it doesn't always work out the way you want and data corruption can happen, hell I wouldn't be surprised if it happened often. Anyhow, thats a rough (and probably hard to follow) overview on spanned dynamic disks.
 
killians45 said:
k, here is how dynamic works. Say you have two HDD. HDD 0 and 1 (as the disk manager sees it). HDD 0 is 40GB and HDD1 is 80GB. Now, you can take HDD 0 and HDD 1 and convert them both to Dynamic and you will NOT lose any data (starts as a 'Basic' volume and converts to a 'Dynamic' volume. Now, say you want the remaining 8GB left on HDD 0 and want to combine that with HDD 1, which is empty. All you do is right click on the unallocated space and click on create volume and what you wanna do is "Span", or extend the volume. Now you have drive C: which is 32GB of HDD 0 and a drive D:(or whatever) which is a total of 88GB (8GB from HDD 0 + 80GB of HDD 1). No problem there. Here are the limitations, though...

1. Data that was on originally written to a Basic HDD can NOT be spanned, can be made dynamic, but not spanned. Now, if you got your HDD, changed it to Dynamic, wrote data to it and later decided to span this HDD then you could because it was originally written to a Dynamic disk, but not from data written while it was in its 'Basic' volume structure.

2. The system volume can NOT be spanned, because of the boot/file structure. A spanned volume doesn't use a MBR, instead it uses its own file system (hence the reason basic HDD info wont convert to a spanned volume). Now, if you had taken the HDD and began it as a dynamic volume, no biggie (save the system section, it doesn't count).

3. When doing a spanned/extended volume, it usually wants you to perform a format (it assumes you have a fresh drive to combine to what is left over from a previous drive), but you dont have to do this. If you already have a Dynamic array, than I suggest backing up data before trying this, as it doesn't always work out the way you want and data corruption can happen, hell I wouldn't be surprised if it happened often. Anyhow, thats a rough (and probably hard to follow) overview on spanned dynamic disks.
You lost me.
Edit: I think you should explain that to him in lamens terms.
 
FoxyLoxy said:
hmm cause i have these two maxtor 160 sata drives, and had them in RAID 0 (only for a month or two did i have them) and then it failed and now one of my drives spins but does nothing else (does not recognize or anything). and im not sure if its the drive but the other one is really fussy and gets "unplugged".

I had read many books and magazines that say your drive is more Susceptible to failure in this set up. that is why i would just leave that setup alone

I use 1 hard drive as my operating system, the second is my documents folder. you can move your document folder to your second hard drive.
 
I have always wondered the same thing and never knew what to do. Now that I know, I am becoming more and more interested in purchasing a RAID mobo.

-Dan The Man
 
Spanned volumes combine areas of unallocated space from multiple disks into one logical volume. However, say I have a drive that is in 'Basic' format (not converted yet). I partition that physical drive to C: and D:. I install, say, half life 2 to the D: drive. Now I take the physical drive and convert it to Dynamic mode and add a second HDD and make it Dynamic, too. Now, if I try and take the D: drive and make a spanned volume it wont work because the program was installed while the HDD was still in 'Basic' mode. Its not compatible because it uses a different file system and not the normal MBR and Fat tables, but instead something called a partition information table.
 
TheMajor said:
RAID0 will only give you the space of 1 drive.

XP Pro has a dynamic drive feature wich enables you to "combine" 2 seperate partitions.

are u on crack?? RAID 0 takes 2 drives, stripes them interlocking and makes the CPU think its 1 large drive RAID 1 is 2 drives acting as a mirror
 
are u on crack?? RAID 0 takes 2 drives, stripes them interlocking and makes the CPU think its 1 large drive RAID 1 is 2 drives acting as a mirror
you are right, but please don't abuse other people if they are wrong about something

a raid 0 is over 2 drives, where half the data goes onto one drive and the other half on the other. the data is written/read to and from both drives at once to double the speed of transfer
 
Ive been using raid for a few months now and its gr8.No problems.Very fast access times.
 
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