I got a new hard drive, now how do I merge them together?

[PowerMan57two]

I got my new 120gb hard drive in the mail today, and i got it all hooked up, and when i go on partition magic pro 8.0 i got it installed but it's know as letter F when i go into my computer. now when i go back into PM8.0 and i right click on the new HD the merge option isn't available. so is there another way i can get my 80gb HD and my new 120GB HD to come together as one drive letter. thanks for any help.

[wonderboy2005]

im not sure how to do that, but are you sure you want to do that? i mean, if for some reason your 2nd hdd should crash, then you'll have some major porblems.... missing over 1/2 of your 'c' drive? just make sure that it is truly worth your while to do this. what's so bad about having a 2nd drive recognized by windows?

[nasrules]

having two drives/partitions is good! put everything you REALLY dont wanna lose on another drive/partition to your Windows one. Then if you have to reinstall you dont lose all your stuff!

[Krell]

PowerMan57two - youre gonna screw things up SO bad, you will never get unscrewed.

We gave you clear, concise steps to be able to add that hard drive. There is a reason for doing it that way, and not using some utility to make your life miserable.

Just do it the normal way, format it NTFS, and get on with your life, then, a short while down the road, a little light will go off inside your head . . . "BING" Ohhhhh thats why do it this way.

Enjoy your holidays, keep it simple

cheers

[PowerMan57two]

okay, thanks for the info, but i still want to have windows think it's 1 big hard drive, i still wanna merge them together, it doesn't matter if my windows crashed anyways cause every oh say 500-700MB I download off the internet i back up on cd disks anyways, so is there i way i can get windows to think this is 1 big c drive and merge these hard drives together, just trust me i'm 100% sure i wanna do this!

[Krell]

I am 100% sure I will not help you on principle


best wishes

[cpugeniusmv]

well, i may as well help you....but i do second the warnings that have been said already.....

This method is for WinXP Pro

Go into the control panel, administrative tools, computer management, disk management, right click where it says "disk 0" and select "convert to dynamic disk"
then do the same to the other disk, and then you can merge them. i haven't done this in a while, so if you have any specific questions, i'll do my best to answer them, but i make no guarantees.

[Munchables]

Merging is very bad in my opinon. You do relize you have to reformat BOTH harddrives? I know in the olden dayz back when I was stupid enough to try this littel stunt you needed 2 of the exact same drives but that is probaly not true any more maybe that was with the software I was using I dono. (lol I did it with 2 500 mg I braged at school saing I had a 1 gig no one belved me LOL!) Why go through all that trouble and strees thinking "oo know what happens if one drive fails!" like wonderboy said. look just be man (or woman) and logicly split up your apps I don't know how big you orginal hd is but you can put like your os, all your old apps, toolz and word porssing shit on one drive and your shared folder(s), sound, video, and immage prossing software on the outer.

peace.

(wate diden't some one else ask this questin on zp?)

[Krell]

Munchables youre still burying yourself

cpugeniusmv - The method you propose is prob the only way I would venture to do it.

Split them wrogly in the future, you can have right issues, different CIDs

You take it from here




Munchables no one believes you, at least I dont. I wouldnt trust you to touch my VCR or toaster.

.

[PowerMan57two]

okay i change both drives to dynamic, but now when i go into partition magic pro 8.0 it wont even let me right click on the drives to bring up a menu where the merge button was, so now how do i merge them together?

[gorphon]

I akree with krell and dealie. DONT DO IT! itll be more hassle then its ever worth even if you do somehow manage to get it working. just have two drives. what is the problem with that?

[PowerMan57two]

okay that didn't help, i keep on getting that advice, but trust me (again) i want to do this, lol so if your not gonna help me please quit posting that info that says don't do it or something.... sorry but i'm getting crabby... lol

[gorphon]

then I just have one more word for you...RAID. morroring or striping, 0 or 1.... its up to you. software ide, promise pci card, whatever. but that will be your best bet. sure you can do it other ways but I dont se how the complexity makes itworthwhile. or even if it were just a matter of clicking one button, why you would even want to do it.

hell, why do you want to do it anyways?


edit: nevermind raid, you need two identical drives to do that, I just reread your first post. Id missed that earlier. still... what is the big deal with having two drives? I honestly see none.

[cpugeniusmv]

Originally posted by PowerMan57two
okay i change both drives to dynamic, but now when i go into partition magic pro 8.0 it wont even let me right click on the drives to bring up a menu where the merge button was, so now how do i merge them together?

it's not in partition magic, it's in that drive manager somewhere. sorry i'm not much help, i haven't done it in a while

[cpugeniusmv]

yes notbob, that is definately the best way of doing it.

[Krell]

Dealie

W a i t a minute . .. I know what happened to you

Youre an ex-help-desk professional !

[cpugeniusmv]

ROFLMAO

that's funny but strange, but i hear similar things all the time :mellow

[kevoid]

Man... I wish I had another hard drive for this comp... I only have a 20 gb drive on this and it is filling up too fast. I need at least 1 TB of space.

[PowerMan57two]

Okay u guys win!! i will keep two hard drives. but is it possible to switch them around? like have windows on the 120gb drive cause it's a lot faster! like the transer speed of copy and pasting big files, and then have my downloaded music, videos ect on the 80gb drive? so what can i do to switch them around? because i give up to many people saying no, u win! lol

[cpugeniusmv]

reinstalling windows (song/poem by les barker...pretty funny)

[notbob]

i migrated a 40 to an 80 once

i used symantec ghost corporate and copied the partition on the 40 to the formatted 80-- mine took 17 minutes to do, and everything worked exactly like it was before

make sure when you start up that only one xp drive is in--otherwise when you restart xp won't work because of some sort of protection they do (the above proceedure took 3 tries before i figured that out)

[PowerMan57two]

thanks for the help, and some umm "okay" info.. lol i got windows xp pro on the 120gb drive, and now i have the 80gb drive free, and i got both drives out of dynamic disk. and everything is back to normal and the windows is working better than before. thanks for the help on switching the 80gb windows over to 120, it took long time, and i did loose everything on both drives but thats okay cause i back up on disks. so thanks again, i'm done here, please someone shut this thread down! j/k lol thanks again, i will stick with 2 hard drive letters,... for now.. lol