Hard drives

[kluch31]

Quick question I have 4 Hard drives 2 ssd's and 2 HDD's is there a way to make my computer think that they are all one drive so i dont have to go hunt for things if i forget what drive I put it on???

[Hackentosher]

1 minute ago, kluch31 said:

Quick question I have 4 Hard drives 2 ssd's and 2 HDD's is there a way to make my computer think that they are all one drive so i dont have to go hunt for things if i forget what drive I put it on???

Yup, that's called a RAID array. 

 

[kluch31]

i already watched that it explains what raids are but not how to do it.

[Hackentosher]

2 minutes ago, kluch31 said:

i already watched that it explains what raids are but not how to do it.

I think Windows has a utility to setup a software RAID and there are other hardware RAID solutions like RAID cards. Just google how to setup a RAD X (insert which flavor of RAID you would like) and go ham.

[DunePilot]

You would have to reformat and lose everything that isn't backed up at least everything on the drives you plan to raid. If you wanted to say.. move everything to one drive (possibly your boot drive) and then throw some of the other drives into a raid 0 you could do that. 

 

I haven't ran a raid setup in probably 15 years... 

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/132877/RAID.html

[kluch31]

Ok cool do they have to be the same drives cuz I got one WD black and a WD blue

[snagals]

Instead of raid you can use symlinks to sort it. It will show the 4 drives but you can make a folder that has all inside it. You can check it here. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

[kluch31]

 Interesting I'll take a look 

[Captain_WD]

6 hours ago, kluch31 said:

~snip~

Hey there welcome to the community! 

 

Have in mind that any RAID array would limit the speed of the SSDs to the one of the HDDs and the capacity of all drives to the one of the smallest. 
Another thing you could go for is the Span mode, but if one drive fails you wouldn't be able to access any of the other drives.

I would simply recommend to use the drives independently and either remember where you put your data or reroute/remap all your folders to one specific drive.

 

Captain_WD.

[Ramaddil]

1 hour ago, Captain_WD said:

Hey there welcome to the community! 

 

Have in mind that any RAID array would limit the speed of the SSDs to the one of the HDDs and the capacity of all drives to the one of the smallest. 
Another thing you could go for is the Span mode, but if one drive fails you wouldn't be able to access any of the other drives.

I would simply recommend to use the drives independently and either remember where you put your data or reroute/remap all your folders to one specific drive.

 

Captain_WD.

I agree with this.  You could always create folder shortcuts to your data that is on specific drives and place the shortcuts on your desktop or in one folder.