Internal hard drive question?
Ok now hard drive 1 is the one with almost everything on it - pics, music the lot! the other is kinda just sitting there!
Now if i wanna use the second one i have to go into my computer in start menu - then select it!
ok now can anyone tell me - am i making life hard for myself doing things that way? what is partitioning? will it make life easier? can i combine the two so that when i save i dont need to go into my computer and select it! dunno - bit of a flegeling with p.c hard drives! anyone??
Answers:
It wasn't necessary to install Windows on the 2nd drive. Copy all of your user created data from that drive into My Documents on your primary drive then Format the 2nd drive to remove the secondary Windows installation and other unnecessary files.
Partitioning is the act of dividing, or partitioning, a single hard drive into multiple logical drives for the purpose of segregating OS installations from one another or from data. What you seem to be wanting to do is to span both drives and that is generally done using a special hard drive adapter that creates a RAID array.
The easiest way to accomplish what I think you're trying to do is to right click on My Documents, select Properties, then select Move to move your documents storage to the secondary drive.Select the destination drive and a folder (or create a new one on the 2nd drive) and click on OK or Apply. What you are doing is moving your current documents storage to a folder on the 2nd drive.
You can also install programs to your second drive but updating those programs can be a slight problem, particularly for a newbie, since many expect to find their data files on C:\Program Files\ProgramDir and may expect you to point them to the correct directory or will fail on update.
Partioning - where you take one hard-drive, and like a cake, cut it up, so that it is split up, and the computer treats this 'pieces' as seperate harddrives.
Hopefully, you have already made drive 1 the master drive and drive 2 the slave drive. Now you can go into Disk Management (under Computer Management) and assign a drive letter to drive 2 (let's say E:).
Now when you save, you still have to drill down to drive E: or in the save as box, just type e:\filename.ext.
As for partitioning, in simple terms, breaking a drive into different formats or drives. This is usually done on one drive.
To get into Computer Management, right-click on My Computer and choose Manage Computer. There is a section called Storage. Expand that and you will see Disk Management. Good luck!
no,this is only possible if you have previously partitioned the drive into two and then unpartition it to create the one whole partition
but you cant combine two seperate fixed disks(hard drives to make one partition),however theres a configuration known as r.a.i.d(redundant array of inexpensive disks)and raid 0 is when you use two drives ,both with windows installed on them to get quicker access speeds
you first need a r.a.i.d controller which are around £30(http://www.scan.co.uk/products/products.
however if your motherboard supports raid this wont be nessecary,just look in your documentation
good luck mate!
The best thing to do now (you didn't need the same operating system on the second hard drive) Go to Start-control panel-administrator tool-computer management-disk management and right click on the second drive and select format, make it a primary or logical second drive where you can back-UP all your music files etc. to.
IF YOU HAVE ALREADY PUT FILES ON THIS DRIVE COPY THEM ONTO YOUR C: DRIVE BEFORE YOU FORMAT.
Windows xp gives you the option for partitioning at the instalation, all you have to do is select the partition depending how big your drive is if it's an 80gb first parition for windows 25000 = 25gb. Once windows is installed you go into administrative tools then storage to set the rest of the drives.
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