have 2 80g HDD's in my pc, want to know if they can be treated as one?

Question

Basiclly when i go into My computer both the HDD's show up as seperate 80gb drives, what i want to know is is there a way to merge them so in My Computer they would be just showing as one 160gb HDD.

Answer 1

You betcha you can,
But how to go about doing it depends more on your drives and other hardware and less on just them being the same size.
For all RAID 0 or striped RAID formations
(redundant array of Independent Disks)
IT is HIGHLY recommended that both drives be the same size and model. You can create a striped set of equal partitions using spanning as mentioned by the above post, but to really get the benefit of a striped set its better to do so with hardware.
The biggest question is what type of drives are they?
If the drives are SATA then usually the mainboard will have an embedded RAID controller built in.
You would need to erase both drives (no partitions) enter the raid setup on boot create the set , then re-install Windows (on nt/xp using the f6 option to install third party drivers)
You MUST install third party drivers on a clean install if you use this method to be safe you will not have potential data corruption.
there are ways to get around it but the partition will not be sound otherwise and Ive seen tables disassemble

IF you are using IDE drives you will need to purchase a special controller such as a promisetech or silicon i680 RAID IDE device.
The setup is essentially the same, but when installing IDE drives it's best to ensure that Primary drives are striped together and secondary drives are striped together as a system can only access one drive on an IDE cable at a time.
The biggest and only justifiable reason to do all of this is performance as both drives in a "0 set" are accessed simultaneously, helping to eliminate the biggest bottleneck in your system.

Answer 2

You can do all things, relax and enjoy, but you will have to give an account for your actions on Judgement day!

Hard drives are so weird, especially on dark windy nights when you don't know the road.

But seriously, I've just put 'primary' and 'logical' partitions on my hdd's and now it's saying things like "Dude, do you have permission to use this space?"

Anyway guess what: even if you merge both hdd's there is always the need for a stable environment which is why people put partitions on their hdd's.

But I think the thing you're looking for is call "FAT" space, and we're not taking beer bellies either.

Answer 3

Simply Yes you can , and you don't need any hardware or software other then windows , Windows xp / 2k pro have an opition in the computer manager's disk administration found in administration tools that allows you to create a dynamic spanned disk , Explaining how to set it up is out of the scope of this article example and proof on concept can be found in known source link.

Answer 4

It can be done by creating a Dynamic Spanned Volume

It is not to be recommended though, if one disk develops a fault then the entire volume is lost including all your data on both disks

Answer 5

normally you couldn't do that on older system but new system with raid function will allow you to raid 2 hard drive to make it become one and also improve performance as all the reading and writting will be shared between two hard disk, in addition to that both hard disk must be of same model/make and check your motherboard manual if raid is supported otherwise you will have to get a raid controller pci card to do it

Answer 6

No, they are 2 different devices and cannot be merged as one

Answer 7

No you can't and even I suggest you to make more partitions!

Answer 8

no way

Answer 9

no way.