How to Combine Multiple Hard Drives into One Volume [Two Tricks for You]
Wasting time searching for files on your computer can be a thing of the past. By combining all your hard drives related to a specific topic into one huge volume, you can easily keep track of your files' locations. This approach can also be beneficial for those on a budget, who can combine multiple hard drives into one volume to save space and money. Additionally, it's a great way to free up terabytes of space for movies, TV shows, and games, or to transfer unused space from one drive to another. This simple solution can save you time and effort in the long run.
Combining multiple hard drives is a straightforward process that can be achieved in various ways. The steps involved in each method are easy to follow, allowing you to combine multiple hard drives into one volume and gain a significant amount of free storage space. By following these simple steps, you can effectively combine your hard drives and make the most of your storage capacity.
Essential Tips for You to Successfully Merge Hard Drives
Before we dive into the details of each step, there are a few tips you should be aware of.
- Increasing the C drive across two disks is not possible.
- Converting both hard disk drives (HDDs) or solid-state drives (SSDs) into dynamic disks is necessary for combining them. (See how to convert basic to dynamic)
- To ensure the reliability and integrity of your data, it's essential to back up your new volume regularly. This is because a corruption of one of the drives can lead to a failure of the entire volume, resulting in potential data loss.
Method #1- Combine Multiple Hard Drives into One with Qiling Partition Master
Qiling Partition Master is a comprehensive partition manager that allows users to create, resize, merge, clone, and format partitions, making it easy to manage Windows partitions without losing any data. It also enables users to create, format, and delete USBs, SSDs, HDDs, and SD cards, providing a wide range of functionality for partition management.
You can use partition magic software to merge your multiple hard drives into a single volume. To achieve this, follow the steps provided by the software, which will guide you through the process of combining your hard drives into a single volume.
Step 1. Convert Basic into Dynamic
- Click "Disk Converter" and select "Convert Basic to Dynamic". Click "Convert" to proceed.
- Confirm the disk conversion from the Basic to Dynamic.
- To convert the other disk to a dynamic disk, select it in Disk Management, right-click it, and choose Convert to Dynamic Disk. This process will remove any existing partitions on the disk.
- When both disks have been converted into dynamic disks, you can merge free space from one disk to another by following the next steps.
Step 2. Merge Two Disks into One Disk
Note: If the disk has unallocated space, you can't merge a system partition, even if you've converted it to dynamic. To proceed, delete all partitions on the unallocated space using Qiling Partition Master. This is necessary to ensure the merge operation can be performed.
- Select the full disk, right-click on it and choose "Resize/Move".
- To resize the partition, use your mouse to drag the partition panel to the right or left, effectively increasing the partition size.
If you want to extend a partition and the unallocated space is on its left, simply drag the left partition handle leftwards to the desired size to move the unallocated space.
Method #2- How to Combine Two Hard Drives/SSD Drives with Disk Management
You can create two types of volumes with Disk Management: Spanned and Stripped. Spanned volumes combine files of different sizes, while Stripped volumes can only be used to combine files of the same size. Spanned volumes use drives sequentially, filling one drive before using the next, whereas Stripped volumes use both drives simultaneously, increasing read and write performance. When choosing between the two, consider your needs: spanned volumes are ideal for combining drives with different volumes, while Stripped volumes offer faster performance when combining drives of the same size.
Mentioned below are the steps to combine two hard drives or two SSD drives using Disk Management.
- Go to Start.
- To launch the Disk Management Tool, simply type diskmgmt.msc into the search box.
- To prepare for the RAID setup, ensure that both drives are unformatted and have no partitions. Additionally, verify that they are dynamic disks by right-clicking on each drive and selecting the option to convert to a dynamic disk. This will ensure a smooth setup process for the RAID configuration.
- To combine multiple drives into one, right-click on the drive you want to combine and select New Spanned Volume or New Stripped Volume from the drop-down menu.
- The New Spanned/Stripped Volume wizard will pop up. Click next once it appears.
- Add the second drive (you can add multiple).
- Select a letter for your new drive, format the new volume, and complete the wizard in one paragraph shortly.
- The Windows Disk Management Tool now displays the newly created volume at the top, with the two combined drives highlighted in purple.
Conclusion
Combining hard drives can help you save money and is a relatively simple process that won't take up much of your time. To have a stress-free experience, be sure to follow the necessary steps and backup your data regularly. This way, you can enjoy the benefits of hard drive merging without any hassle.
Qiling Partition Master allows you to create a full and identical backup of a partition by copying it to another drive. You can try it out to see how it works.
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