HDD consolatdation

[Hybris5112]

So I have a pair of 4TB drives that I want to consulate into a single 10TB HDD. They've served as my bulk storage drives so I don't need to worry about moving the OS over but I would like to move them without having to reinstall the various programs I have on both. I also want to avoid having more than one partition as previous experience has shown me that there is nothing really to be gain by breaking up a drive like that.

 

Am I asking for the impossible?

[vanished]

It might be possible.  Say for example one of the 4 TB drives is D:\, and you have something installed on it, you should be able to continue using that program without reinstalling if you move all its files over to the new 10 TB drive, and then set it up so that the 10 TB drive is mounted as D:\

[MstaR35]

4 minutes ago, Hybris5112 said:

So I have a pair of 4TB drives that I want to consulate into a single 10TB HDD. They've served as my bulk storage drives so I don't need to worry about moving the OS over but I would like to move them without having to reinstall the various programs I have on both. I also want to avoid having more than one partition as previous experience has shown me that there is nothing really to be gain by breaking up a drive like that.

 

Am I asking for the impossible?

This depends entirely on the programs TBH. I've done mass migrations like this in the past and even though  certain applications worked a breeze, some just had random errors in-expectedly and others refused to boot at all. I believe it because certain residual data is stored in a specific way which doesn't allow it to be moved like that. 

 

If you use a data migration software to transfer the data it will probably create partitions (although you can sometimes work around this) so your best bet is just to copy and paste all the necessary data onto the drives and see what works as well as what doesn't. Removing and re-installing the ones that don't work. I do understand how much of a pain in the a** this is though. However if you're not changing OS most the time nearly all files work, although I believe that the changes in directory may cause more advanced applications to crash. Hope this helps.

 

[Hybris5112]

5 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

It might be possible.  Say for example one of the 4 TB drives is D:\, and you have something installed on it, you should be able to continue using that program without reinstalling if you move all its files over to the new 10 TB drive, and then set it up so that the 10 TB drive is mounted as D:\

I would think the system registry wouldn't allow that in the first place.

[vanished]

Just now, Hybris5112 said:

I would think the system registry wouldn't allow that in the first place.

It wouldn't know the difference, but it's essential the path to every file remains the same, otherwise you're right there'll be issues.

[Metal_Kitty]

you could try using robocopy to migrate the data across however i recommend that you look the commands for that up first to make sure you know what your doing with it... 

Robo copy can automate the entire migration and you can go out for a few hours and not worry...

 

 

[SCHISCHKA]

22 minutes ago, Hybris5112 said:

I would think the system registry wouldn't allow that in the first place.

back up the registry. Registry is always the problem with moving applications. Simple applications are easy but big proprietary ones have a ton of hidden links and dependencies. My experience is cloning a disk is not faster than doing a fresh install.

[vanished]

28 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

back up the registry. Registry is always the problem with moving applications. Simple applications are easy but big proprietary ones have a ton of hidden links and dependencies. My experience is cloning a disk is not faster than doing a fresh install.

You'e right that programs tend to scatter around additional files like birdseed, taking root in the OS in entirely non-obvious ways, and for this reason, simply copying the folder of an installed program from one PC to another has a very low chance of working.

 

However, that's not what's happening here.  OP is keeping an existing install, and just playing with the drives that applications were installed to.  Thus, so long as the files remain where they've always been (in terms of path, like D:\Program Files\my app\etc.) they should continue to work, even if they've been moved to a new physical drive.

[Hybris5112]

31 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

You'e right that programs tend to scatter around additional files like birdseed, taking root in the OS in entirely non-obvious ways, and for this reason, simply copying the folder of an installed program from one PC to another has a very low chance of working.

 

However, that's not what's happening here.  OP is keeping an existing install, and just playing with the drives that applications were installed to.  Thus, so long as the files remain where they've always been (in terms of path, like D:\Program Files\my app\etc.) they should continue to work, even if they've been moved to a new physical drive.

I figure as long as I make backups I should be ok to experiment as needed and who knows maybe I'll find a solution to another drive migration issue I'm facing.