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Old June 5th 09, 05:28 PM posted to microsoft.public.windows.vista.hardware_devices
R. C. White
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Posts: 1,871
Default Can I combine two hard disks together?

Hi, SweHomie.

(Pardon the empty Reply - I hit Send too soon.)

Easy. And you don't need any more hardware or software. Just use Disk
Management and good ol' Windows Explorer.

Your description is a little ambiguous but I THINK you mean you have a
single hard disk drive divided into two partitions. The two partitions are
often referred to as "drives", but they are simply divisions created on the
one hard disk drive by software. Each partition is assigned a "drive"
letter. If you run Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc - you'll need
Administrator credentials), Maximize the window, and look carefully at the
bottom part, the Graphical Display, you should see what I mean.

You should see a single wide graphic box. In the leftmost column it should
say "Disk 0". (If you had a second HDD it would be Disk 1.) The box should
be divided into 4 sections: Disk name; Drive C:, about 50 GB; Drive D:,
about 10 GB; and Free Space, about 400 GB. (I'm using rounded GB numbers;
we don't need to bother with exact numbers here.) Each drive will show info
such as GB used. The final "Free Space", with a green bar over it, should
be your 400+ GB remaining space. If that is what you see, then continue...

This will be a multi-step process, but each step is easy. Just do them in
sequence:

1. Right-click in the Free Space and choose New Simple Volume. Tell the
Wizard to create a large volume, say 350 GB. Don't bother to format this
volume or assign it a letter. It's just here to soak up space to give us
breathing room to expand Drive C: later.

2. Right-click in the remaining Free Space (about 50 GB) and choose New
Simple Volume again. This time, let it use up all the remaining space
(about 50 GB?). Format it and assign it Drive X:.

3. Using Windows Explorer, copy ALL the contents of Drive D: into Drive
X:.

4. After verifying that all your files are safely in Drive X:,
right-click in Drive D: and Delete Volume.

5. Right-click on Drive X: and Change Drive Letter and Paths. Change X:
to D:.

6. Verify that you now have Free Space of about 360 GB between Drive C:
and Drive D:.

7. Right-click on Drive C: and Extend Volume. Let the Wizard default to
use ALL the available space.

8. Done!

Your Drive C: should now be about 410 GB (the original 50 plus the 360
extended). Drive D: should be about 50 GB. There should be no remaining
Free Space.

My numbers are only suggestions, of course. If 10 GB is enough for your
Drive D:, you could easily adjust those numbers. (Note that Extend Volume
deals in MB, not GB; if you want to extend by 10 GB, type in 10,000.) Will
410 GB in Drive C: be enough for your gaming?

All this should probably take less than 10 minutes if you hurry - but don't
hurry! Take your time. You still should be all done within an hour. And
using no hardware or software except what you already have.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 RC 7100

"SweHomie" wrote in message
...

HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I have two local disk drives C
and D and i have a 500GB HD my C drive is only 49.83GB my D drive is
9.77GB and there is 407.17BG remaing and ive tried to combine them both
but when i go to extend hard drisk its in grey and it will not let me
click it. i do lots of gaming so i need a big harddrive and i cant have
them split up like this it wont let me play so many games on a 48 GB
hard drive any suggestions in what to do?


--
SweHomie