How to make two harddrives appear as one local disk..

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devarinti

Weaksauce
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Feb 15, 2009
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A little while ago I built a computer for the purpose of gaming and other regular daily usage. I was on a budget then (and still am) so I used a really old IDE 80 GB hard drive that I had lying around for the build. Mostly everything else was new except the case. Anyway, today I finally added a 500 gig SATA harddrive to it. Now the big question is how do I make the two disks combined sort of?? Basically, I am wondering if I can install a game on the new hard drive and still be able to play it or if it'd cause issues since there is no Windows XP installed on the new hard drive or any operating system for that matter. The windows XP is installed on the old IDE hard drive which I left in there.

thanks for any responses.
 
Even if you could do it (striping an IDE and a SATA drive would be quite a trick which I presume to be impossible) you wouldn't want to. Reinstall Windows on the SATA drive and ditch the slow old IDE drive.
 
easiest way would be to mount the second drive as a folder in the primary drive.

youtube diskmanagement
 
criccio said:
Haha, what where the chances of that?

Sounds like somebody just needs to upgrade.
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maybe so but upgrades ain't free.. there's one problem.. i guess if there is really is no other solution i'll just have to install windows on my other disk separately but i'd hate to have to reinstall all games, programs etc etc..
 
criccio said:
Windows 7 RC is until June of next year.
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what does the RC stand for? and how would I go about doing that??

btw a lil while back i read something about Windows 7 having multiple versions and the most basic version would limit users to using only 3 programs at a time.. is this part of the whole RC deal??
 
RC = Release Candidate, the version before it is retail ready.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/download.aspx

Its the Ultimate version, so no, its the best version there is.


Most of us are running the RTM version which stands for Release to Manufacturing. We paid for it and downloaded it via MS Technet or MSDN.

The RC is more than capable of being used as a full time OS.
 
criccio said:
RC = Release Candidate, the version before it is retail ready.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/download.aspx

Its the Ultimate version, so no, its the best version there is.


Most of us are running the RTM version which stands for Release to Manufacturing. We paid for it and downloaded it via MS Technet or MSDN.

The RC is more than capable of being used as a full time OS.
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so y the freeness if it is so release ready?? there's always a catch to this shit.. and b'sides does this honestly solve my problem or just another thing I can do to my computer??
 
To answer your original question, just tell the game installer to install to your new hard drive. There is no need to fool the system into thinking the two drives are one.
 
devarinti said:
so y the freeness if it is so release ready?? there's always a catch to this shit.. and b'sides does this honestly solve my problem or just another thing I can do to my computer??
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Its free because its not the finished retail code, just close to it. It will run completely normally until March, 2010, then it will begin scheduled shutdown's every two hours. It will stop working completely in June.

I'm surprised you don't know this. This forum has been bubbling with Windows 7 threads for months. The RC was available to download almost 4 months ago.
 
ryan_975 said:
To answer your original question, just tell the game installer to install to your new hard drive. There is no need to fool the system into thinking the two drives are one.
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ok but then will the game actually run since there is no real operating system software on the other hard drive.. and supposing it does run, why not just install all my games on my external hard drive then.. that thing is pretty damn large too.. i've been told you can't install games on externals and they don't run even if you do..
 
devarinti said:
ok but then will the game actually run since there is no real operating system software on the other hard drive.. and supposing it does run, why not just install all my games on my external hard drive then.. that thing is pretty damn large too.. i've been told you can't install games on externals and they don't run even if you do..
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I'm not sure where you got your information, but the OS only has to be on one hard drive. As long as you're booting from that drive, you can install software on any other drive and it'll run just fine.

As far as installing to an external drive, they're typically very slow and you would experience a major performance penalty anytime the game went to load information from the drive.
 
criccio said:
Its free because its not the finished retail code, just close to it. It will run completely normally until March, 2010, then it will begin scheduled shutdown's every two hours. It will stop working completely in June.

I'm surprised you don't know this. This forum has been bubbling with Windows 7 threads for months. The RC was available to download almost 4 months ago.
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haven't been on the forum site in a lil bit.. i just read the stuff on that link you sent me.. I noticed what the whole restarting thing as u said.. see that's some old bullshit.. i say, be generous and hand a brotha some software.. companies and their damn profit oriented goals..
 
ryan_975 said:
I'm not sure where you got your information, but the OS only has to be on one hard drive. As long as you're booting from that drive, you can install software on any other drive and it'll run just fine.
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so basically you can install and run any given program off of an external USB hard drive or any internal hard drive as long as one hard drive has an OS installed?? sweet i ma go try it.. if i fail, i shall make a new thread (or continue this one)..
 
I wouldn't install software on a usb drive, install it on the other internal drive in your system. Yes it will work, but why not use the 500 gig sata you have?

Or better yet, why not just image the 80 to the 500 and use the 500 as your primary drive. As long as you have your sata ports in ide emulation, you shouldn't have to worry about the difference in drive type.

Use Hirens Boot cd and one of the imaging programs on it.
 
devarinti said:
haven't been on the forum site in a lil bit.. i just read the stuff on that link you sent me.. I noticed what the whole restarting thing as u said.. see that's some old bullshit.. i say, be generous and hand a brotha some software.. companies and their damn profit oriented goals..
Click to expand...

Yea no.... They give you Windows 7 Ultimate for free for a year and you complain... typical.
 
criccio said:
Yea no.... They give you Windows 7 Ultimate for free for a year and you complain... typical.
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lol of course i complain.. why would i not?? no worries however, i always end up getting a free copy (not pirated ones) of most windows OSes when they do come out..
 
ND40oz said:
I wouldn't install software on a usb drive, install it on the other internal drive in your system. Yes it will work, but why not use the 500 gig sata you have?

Or better yet, why not just image the 80 to the 500 and use the 500 as your primary drive. As long as you have your sata ports in ide emulation, you shouldn't have to worry about the difference in drive type.

Use Hirens Boot cd and one of the imaging programs on it.
Click to expand...

hmm interesting idea.. looks like i may have to look into this..
 
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