is it possible to combine all HDD into one?

[winkawak]

I have 4 1tb hdd in my computer that has installed programs and games. If i get a hdd thats larger than 4tb will i be able to combine the current 4hdd into the new 4tb hdd?

will the programs and games still work?

what about drive letters and path of the programs and games?

 

[Pharr Carnell]

Unlikely all the programs will work; some might but as far as the Operating System goes, you're far better off with a fresh install...and you can always make a note of the various drive letters on which partition and then make them the same later on through Disk Management...but I doubt everything will transfer over without any problems...

[winkawak]

Just now, Pharr Carnell said:

Unlikely all the programs will work; some might but as far as the Operating System goes, you're far better off with a fresh install...and you can always make a note of the various drive letters on which partition and then make them the same later on through Disk Management...but I doubt everything will transfer over without any problems...

i should of clarify abit more

i do have a ssd with os installed, the 4 1tb hdd only has some programs and mostly games.

 

[The1Dickens]

19 minutes ago, winkawak said:

I have 4 1tb hdd in my computer that has installed programs and games. If i get a hdd thats larger than 4tb will i be able to combine the current 4hdd into the new 4tb hdd?

will the programs and games still work?

what about drive letters and path of the programs and games?

 

Q1.) If I get a 4TB HDD, can I combine the current drives into the new one?

A1.) Yes, you can move all the files and programs from the multiple 1TB drives to the 1 4TB drive.

Q2.) Will the programs and games still work?

A2.) The games and programs could still work, but depending on the game or program, might throw a fit.

Q3.) What about drive letters/paths?

A3.) Drive letters will be automatically assigned (or you can do it manually) when you install the 4TB drive. Paths will need to be reset, and is fairly simple in most programs.

 

There is some caveats, such as dependencies, and where some programs look for files on startup (some are specific, some are "dynamic"). Sometimes, you will have to uninstall and then re-install the program to resolve it. Or at least, that's the simplest way.

 

If you are using a storefront, like Steam or any of the dozens of others, you can easily just move the games over, tell the store where to find them, and you should be good. Sometimes, it will do the 'first time setup' again, but you should still have all your save data and all that jazz. Assuming, of course, your OS (Windows) is installed on its own drive already, and not one of the 1TB drives you are clearing out. Because at that point, it will be much easier to reinstall Windows altogether.

[winkawak]

3 minutes ago, The1Dickens said:

Q1.) If I get a 4TB HDD, can I combine the current drives into the new one?

A1.) Yes, you can move all the files and programs from the multiple 1TB drives to the 1 4TB drive.

Q2.) Will the programs and games still work?

A2.) The games and programs could still work, but depending on the game or program, might throw a fit.

Q3.) What about drive letters/paths?

A3.) Drive letters will be automatically assigned (or you can do it manually) when you install the 4TB drive. Paths will need to be reset, and is fairly simple in most programs.

 

There is some caveats, such as dependencies, and where some programs look for files on startup (some are specific, some are "dynamic"). Sometimes, you will have to uninstall and then re-install the program to resolve it. Or at least, that's the simplest way.

 

If you are using a storefront, like Steam or any of the dozens of others, you can easily just move the games over, tell the store where to find them, and you should be good. Sometimes, it will do the 'first time setup' again, but you should still have all your save data and all that jazz. Assuming, of course, your OS (Windows) is installed on its own drive already, and not one of the 1TB drives you are clearing out. Because at that point, it will be much easier to reinstall Windows altogether.

can i partition the 4tb hdd into 4 with its individual drive letter? will that fix the problem with programs or games(non storefront) not working?

[The1Dickens]

Just now, winkawak said:

can i partition the 4tb hdd into 4 with its individual drive letter?

You can, technically, but that would make for a very time consuming day of sorting what goes where. Mainly because you can't have 2 of the same drive letter, at least not easily. You'd need an external drive to hold everything on while you partition the 4TB drive into 4, then move everything over that was on the 'old' drive. It's much easier to just use the whole 4TB as one drive.

[JZStudios]

You can dump everything onto one drive. If you're using it for games you just need to direct the launcher to the new drive and have it check and verify all the files. Anything else will still be linked to old drive letter path dependencies, but it's not hard to change. It's just like moving a file from your desktop into My Documents or something, you just have to point whatever program is requesting it at the new location.

[mariushm]

Yeah, that would work, creating 4 partitions and then simply changing drive letters from Disk Management

I advise against it though. Better to create a single big partition.

 

If you're using Steam for some games, you can create a new Steam Library on your new big partition and then move the game to the new steam library.

If that doesn't work, you can create a backup of your Steam game and then install the steam backup to your new steam library.

 

Also, I don't recommend this, but you can actually give several driver letters to a single partition , so you could have drive D and drive E point to the same partition F:

Just go in Disk Management , right click on the partition and select Change drive letter and path, and you can then click on Add to add new letter to that drive.

 

So you could change the drive letters of you 4  1 TB drives to something temporary like K: L: M: N:  and then add the original drive letters to your 4 TB drive's partition and move the data.

 

I don't really recommend it though.

 

There's another option, to use junctions... You can simply move your data to your new drive and then you can create a fake folder which Windows will treat it as a redirection point, using the MKLINK command :

 

MKLINK /D C:\Programs_Fake D:\Programs_Real

 

will create a fake folder C:\Programs - any application that reads or writes files from C:\Programs_Fake will actually read the stuff from D:\Programs_Real 

 

So let's say you have the games on D:\Epic_Games  and your 4 TB drive is drive letter X: and you want to move it to X:\Games\Epic

 

MKLINK /D D:\Epic_Games  X:\Games\Epic 

 

The command prompt must have administrative rights to work  (Start, run/search, cmd right click run as administrator) 

Also D:\Epic_Games must not exist , otherwise the fake folder can't be created.

 

You can remove the fake folder by typing

 

RMDIR D:\Epic_Games

 

in command prompt. You can't remove it from Windows Explorer, because Explorer will actually delete the contents of X:\Games\Epic

 

 

 

 

 

[winkawak]

may i ask whats the reason why you dont recommend partitioning the 4 1tb hdd into the 4tb hdd? Ive never done this before but if i had to guess, i guess i can use macrium reflect it can clone a hdd into a new hdd. Its what i used before for failing hdd. If i remember correctly it has the option to add partition when i clone a new hdd. Lets say my 4 1tb hdd drive letters are a-d. Should i set the 4tb letter to something else and have the partition a-d? will it cause error?

 

my games are not storefront games like steam/origin/gog....etc

good old installation like back in the days just like a program install

[mariushm]

The majority of those games (good old installation) will actually run just fine if you launch them from other folders.

 

To test, simply rename the folder of the game to something else and go inside the folder and launch the game executable and see if it works. If it doesn't, then you can rename the folder back and no harm done.

 

They usually don't memorize or store the actual path to the game folder anywhere, except in the Add/Remove programs, to uninstall the game.

 

Most games will create some folders in your user profile folder (C:\Users\[user name]), or in My Documents \ My Games but most of the time is  Users > [ your user name ] > Application Data > Company Name > Game name  >   or similar paths.

That's what you have to be concerned about, if you reinstall your Windows or stuff like that.

 

The reason why I don't recommend making 4 partitions, is because you'll have a hard time afterwards... you may end up with 10-20 GB free disk space on each partition and you want to install a 50-60 GB game and you'll waste half an hour moving files around to make 50-60 GB of free disk space on one partition.

 

Also - and this is less of an issue - if you install and uninstall games often, you'll cause higher disk fragmentation with small partitions and you'd have to defragment the hard drive more often.

A single partition will become less fragmented over time.

 

 

ps. If you do decide to make 4 partitions on the 4 TB drive, you can simply copy the folders over. There's no need to use Macrium Reflect or other disk cloning tools to close the partitions.

 

Just go in Disk Management and create the four partitions on your 4 TB drive, and give them each a drive letter.

Copy the files over.

Right click on the old drive letters and select Change drive letter and path and change the letters of the original drives to other letters.

If needed, reboot.

Go in Disk Management on your 4 TB drive, select each drive letter and now you can use the letters that were originally used on the 4 1 TB drives.

 

[winkawak]

48 minutes ago, mariushm said:

The majority of those games (good old installation) will actually run just fine if you launch them from other folders.

 

To test, simply rename the folder of the game to something else and go inside the folder and launch the game executable and see if it works. If it doesn't, then you can rename the folder back and no harm done.

 

They usually don't memorize or store the actual path to the game folder anywhere, except in the Add/Remove programs, to uninstall the game.

 

Most games will create some folders in your user profile folder (C:\Users\[user name]), or in My Documents \ My Games but most of the time is  Users > [ your user name ] > Application Data > Company Name > Game name  >   or similar paths.

That's what you have to be concerned about, if you reinstall your Windows or stuff like that.

 

The reason why I don't recommend making 4 partitions, is because you'll have a hard time afterwards... you may end up with 10-20 GB free disk space on each partition and you want to install a 50-60 GB game and you'll waste half an hour moving files around to make 50-60 GB of free disk space on one partition.

 

Also - and this is less of an issue - if you install and uninstall games often, you'll cause higher disk fragmentation with small partitions and you'd have to defragment the hard drive more often.

A single partition will become less fragmented over time.

 

 

ps. If you do decide to make 4 partitions on the 4 TB drive, you can simply copy the folders over. There's no need to use Macrium Reflect or other disk cloning tools to close the partitions.

 

Just go in Disk Management and create the four partitions on your 4 TB drive, and give them each a drive letter.

Copy the files over.

Right click on the old drive letters and select Change drive letter and path and change the letters of the original drives to other letters.

If needed, reboot.

Go in Disk Management on your 4 TB drive, select each drive letter and now you can use the letters that were originally used on the 4 1 TB drives.

 

Those are very good points, glad you point them out. Now by the look of it partitioning the 4 hdd into 1 hdd is not such a good idea after all lol. The reason why i ask this in the first place is because im still running windows 7. Support will end less than a month i wanted to make the transition to w10 but so afraid something will go wrong like programs or games will not run correctly or worse not being transferred into new os. I thought having multiple hdd into one would be easier to backup and revert in case things dont work out. Other have suggested media creation tool but im skeptical how well it works. Too many programs and games to reinstall in case of failure.