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Question

merge 2 physical identical hard drives into one

Jul 29, 2011 3:22AM PDT

I have a sony vaio laptop computer running windows vista home premium service pack 2. it has two physical hard drives that are identical (toshiba mk1637gsx). the primary drive is almost full. I would like to merge the two physical drives into one without reformating my primary drive to create more space for programs. Is this possible? If so please give me instructions on how to merge the drives into one. Your help in this matter would be much appreciated.
thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: merging drives
Jul 29, 2011 3:26AM PDT

No, that can't be done in Vista. But you can move a great deal of the content of the c:-drive (your Documents folder and everything it contains and the other subfolders of the rootfolder you created yourself) to the d:-drive and start using that.
Windows and Users (except for the Documents part) can't be moved. Program Files can't be moved, but you can install most (not all!) programs onto the d:-drive also.

To move your Documents folder, right click and find the Move command in it's properties.

Kees

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can it be done with windows 7 pro?
Jul 29, 2011 12:30PM PDT

I have already moved my data and documents to an external drive. Since it is not possible with vista, is it possible with windows 7 pro?

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Re: merging
Jul 29, 2011 11:53PM PDT

Certainly in Windows 7 (and possibly in Vista also, although I've never done it), you can use junction points. Then that whole d:-drive becomes a folder in the c:-drive.
I'll leave it to you to research the details.

Did they ever tell you that external drives are slow and unreliable? Only store documents on them if you either have a good backup or don't mind losing them.

Kees

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PS. Here's a Microsoft web page about that.
Jul 30, 2011 12:36AM PDT
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Answer
BEWARE. It's a Sony.
Jul 29, 2011 1:05PM PDT

When it comes time to restore the machine they tend to recreate the same setup.

As there are TWO PHYSICAL DRIVES there is no other way than to RAID the two but unless you are comfortable with this I feel you should use the other drive for some files and keep the C drive tidy.
Bob