Can you merge drives in software do they only look like one drive?

Chimp Paradox · 22 Sep 2014 at 11:44

Other than my OS drive, I have 3 additional SSD which house all of my files, primarily music. I would like this to appear as one drive in windows. Has anyone got any advice on how this can be achieved, if at all?

Thanks!

leigh_boy · 22 Sep 2014 at 11:56

if you have a pro version of windows u can raid 5 them together not sure if it supports raid 0
to do this you have to covert the drivs to dynamic, and then you will loose your data when you covert them to a 0 or 5 and then copy the data back

link - http://www.overclockers.com/setting-up-os-raid-with-windows-7-ultimate/

rpstewart · 22 Sep 2014 at 12:34

You could mount the other drives onto paths within the boot drive, for example:

C:/drive1
C:/drive2
C:/drive3

Obviously you can mount them wherever you like. Only problem is that you won't see the total amount of free space displayed in one place.

Chimp Paradox · 22 Sep 2014 at 15:48

Thanks guys. Having done some more research myself it appears even RAID has its problems so it sounds like I am after a more cosmetic solution as sketched out by RPStewart. So would drive 1,drive 2 just be folders within the drive according to windows right? Is there a good online guide you know of which talks about this? Thanks!

Buffalo2102 · 22 Sep 2014 at 19:41

I don't know which Windows OS you are using but have you looked at Storage Spaces?
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-8/storage-spaces-pools

Grrrrr · 22 Sep 2014 at 23:08

I use and would definitely recommend Drive Bender. It's exactly what you're looking for.

dbmzk1 · 27 Sep 2014 at 09:51

Try stablebit drive pool

Chimp Paradox · 27 Sep 2014 at 16:42

Thanks guys. What does all this mean in the case of drive failure? Thats my worry. All I really want is "seperate" drives but they look together, so if a drive fails, I only lose that drive (although I am backed up on crashplan), rather than a raid type configeration (as I understand it) where it spreads a mp3, say, across 4 drives so if you lose a drive you basically lose that mp3 as its fragmented.

Grrrrr · 27 Sep 2014 at 20:46

That's what drive bender does, you only lose what's on the drive that fails. You can also enable "duplication" which makes a hidden copy on another drive, so if a drive fails you can recover what you lost. Obviously that means you halve your capacity though.

John24 · 27 Sep 2014 at 20:52

unRAID is worth a look aswell.