Hard Drive[s] question[s]

I have two hard-drives installed on my computer, one 80GB, and one 160GB, and I'm running Windows XP. The 160GB is the drive I use for all my storage: bootlegs, general music [albums, whatever], and movies. I barely have anything on my "C" drive, too. I was wondering if there's someway I could partition the drives, so that I could maybe leave 5-10GB for one partition [for the "C" drive], and mash the rest together, so that the 160GB drive would really be 250GB, or if I can't mash them together, partition my "C" drive so that it's two seperate drives, one 5-10GB, and another 70GB.

Any help at all is immensly appreciated.

[Ted]

You can't "mash" them together. There may be a program that will make it appear as though the two partitions are one, but I don't know about it. If there is, I'd stay away from it anyway. If you have problems with one drive, the data on the other one would probably be lost (as well as what's on the bad drive, most likely). Also, if the program were to screw up, yo ucould lose all data on both drives. The easiest thing to do would be to use a partitioning program such as Partition Magic to make the two partitions on your "C" drive.

You're idea is approaching what a RAID array does, but that too is bad, depending on how it's configured. You can lose all data if only one drive goes bad.

Originally Posted by Ted

You can't "mash" them together. There may be a program that will make it appear as though the two partitions are one, but I don't know about it. If there is, I'd stay away from it anyway. If you have problems with one drive, the data on the other one would probably be lost (as well as what's on the bad drive, most likely). Also, if the program were to screw up, yo ucould lose all data on both drives. The easiest thing to do would be to use a partitioning program such as Partition Magic to make the two partitions on your "C" drive.

You're idea is approaching what a RAID array does, but that too is bad, depending on how it's configured. You can lose all data if only one drive goes bad.

So, if I use "Partition Magic" I can make two partitions, one for the "C" drive, and another with the rest of the storage? So I can have the 10GB "C" drive, and for example, an "X' 70GB drive?

[Ted]

Yes. With Partition Magic, you can make as many partitions on a hard drive as you wish. There are limits, but I don't recall off-hand what they are. I really don't think you'd need to worry about them.

There may be a freeware program, but I'm unaware of it. You can try sourceforge.org and see if something is there. Partition Magic is a very popular partitioning program. Although I haven't used it, I am confident in recommending it due to the vast number of satisfied users I know.

Originally Posted by Ted

Yes. With Partition Magic, you can make as many partitions on a hard drive as you wish. There are limits, but I don't recall off-hand what they are. I really don't think you'd need to worry about them.

There may be a freeware program, but I'm unaware of it. You can try sourceforge.org and see if something is there. Partition Magic is a very popular partitioning program. Although I haven't used it, I am confident in recommending it due to the vast number of satisfied users I know.

Wow! Thanks, I really appreciate it.

I "acquired" Partition Magic, but I have to wait 'til I buy some diskettes. Good thing I'm broke!