Can I combine two hard disks together?

[Steve Hall]

I have a Toshiba laptop and it has come with a single 120Gb hard disk.
However it is partitioned into a C drive and an E drive split 50:50. I
don't really need to have two seperate areas in this way and would like to
combine them together to have a single logical drive on the laptop. Can I
do this from within Windows Vista that is installed on the laptop?

Thanks

Steve

 

[Jon Pope]

the e drive as u say is a recovery partition it should b the d drive

 

[DL]

Unlikely, the hidden recovery partition would be in the order of 10gb or
less
D is likely the dvd/cd

And if the laptop is ever recovered to origonal configeration then both
partitions would likely be recreated

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Provided that a) the two volumes are contiguous (ie: next to each other) and
b) that E: is not your recovery volume, then all you need do is run disk
manager (diskmgmt.msc) and remove the E: volume. Then expand C: to encompass
the resulting free (unallocated) space. If they are not contiguous, then you
will need third party software to manipulate them so that they are. You can
only expand a volume into free space that is immediately after it, not in
front of it.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Pete Stavrakoglou]

Unlikely, the hidden recovery partition would be in the order of 10gb or
less
D is likely the dvd/cd

And if the laptop is ever recovered to origonal configeration then both
partitions would likely be recreated

I agree, the D:| drive is the CD/DVD. I've got three Toshiba's in the
family, none of them have recovery partitions, they all use recovery disks.

 

[Tae Song]

HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I have two local disk drives C
and D and i have a 500GB HD my C drive is only 49.83GB my D drive is
9.77GB and there is 407.17BG remaing and ive tried to combine them both
but when i go to extend hard drisk its in grey and it will not let me
click it. i do lots of gaming so i need a big harddrive and i cant have
them split up like this it wont let me play so many games on a 48 GB
hard drive any suggestions in what to do?

You have to convert the disks to dynamic first in disk management. I am not
sure I would recommend doing this, if one of the drives dies you could end
up losing data on both drives.

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I have two local disk drives C
and D and i have a 500GB HD my C drive is only 49.83GB my D drive is
9.77GB and there is 407.17BG remaing and ive tried to combine them both
but when i go to extend hard drisk its in grey and it will not let me
click it. i do lots of gaming so i need a big harddrive and i cant have
them split up like this it wont let me play so many games on a 48 GB
hard drive any suggestions in what to do?

You need to use a program like Acronis Disk Director which will safely
create and merge partitions..

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

You have to convert the disks to dynamic first in disk management. I am
not sure I would recommend doing this, if one of the drives dies you could
end up losing data on both drives.

Not a good idea at all..

 

[Ashton Crusher]

HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I have two local disk drives C
and D and i have a 500GB HD my C drive is only 49.83GB my D drive is
9.77GB and there is 407.17BG remaing and ive tried to combine them both
but when i go to extend hard drisk its in grey and it will not let me
click it. i do lots of gaming so i need a big harddrive and i cant have
them split up like this it wont let me play so many games on a 48 GB
hard drive any suggestions in what to do?

Here's what I would do if you have sufficient space left on the C
drive. Copy everything on the D drive over to the C drive. Then Back
up the C drive with Ghost or Acronis or a similar program that makes a
full copy suitable for transfer to a new drive. Then using
Acronis/Ghost restore your C drive Image to what's now your D drive.
When you get done every thing will then be on the 500G drive which
will be your C drive and you can throw out the old D drive or use it
for the virtual memory file drive.

 

[RalfG]

HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I have two local disk drives C
and D and i have a 500GB HD my C drive is only 49.83GB my D drive is
9.77GB and there is 407.17BG remaing and ive tried to combine them both
but when i go to extend hard drisk its in grey and it will not let me
click it. i do lots of gaming so i need a big harddrive and i cant have
them split up like this it wont let me play so many games on a 48 GB
hard drive any suggestions in what to do?

Is your D: drive a recovery partition that was put on the drive by the
computer manufacturer? If so don't do anything at all to change it or try to
use it for anything else.

If the empty space is adjacent to the C: partition you should be able to
expand C: into that space using disk management. If Vista disk management
cannot do it for some reason there are 3rd party utilities which can. Easus
Partition Master comes in a free version:

http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

 

[R. C. White]

HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I have two local disk drives C
and D and i have a 500GB HD my C drive is only 49.83GB my D drive is
9.77GB and there is 407.17BG remaing and ive tried to combine them both
but when i go to extend hard drisk its in grey and it will not let me
click it. i do lots of gaming so i need a big harddrive and i cant have
them split up like this it wont let me play so many games on a 48 GB
hard drive any suggestions in what to do?

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, SweHomie.

(Pardon the empty Reply - I hit Send too soon.)

Easy. And you don't need any more hardware or software. Just use Disk
Management and good ol' Windows Explorer.

Your description is a little ambiguous but I THINK you mean you have a
single hard disk drive divided into two partitions. The two partitions are
often referred to as "drives", but they are simply divisions created on the
one hard disk drive by software. Each partition is assigned a "drive"
letter. If you run Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc - you'll need
Administrator credentials), Maximize the window, and look carefully at the
bottom part, the Graphical Display, you should see what I mean.

You should see a single wide graphic box. In the leftmost column it should
say "Disk 0". (If you had a second HDD it would be Disk 1.) The box should
be divided into 4 sections: Disk name; Drive C:, about 50 GB; Drive D:,
about 10 GB; and Free Space, about 400 GB. (I'm using rounded GB numbers;
we don't need to bother with exact numbers here.) Each drive will show info
such as GB used. The final "Free Space", with a green bar over it, should
be your 400+ GB remaining space. If that is what you see, then continue...

This will be a multi-step process, but each step is easy. Just do them in
sequence:

1. Right-click in the Free Space and choose New Simple Volume. Tell the
Wizard to create a large volume, say 350 GB. Don't bother to format this
volume or assign it a letter. It's just here to soak up space to give us
breathing room to expand Drive C: later.

2. Right-click in the remaining Free Space (about 50 GB) and choose New
Simple Volume again. This time, let it use up all the remaining space
(about 50 GB?). Format it and assign it Drive X:.

3. Using Windows Explorer, copy ALL the contents of Drive D: into Drive
X:.

4. After verifying that all your files are safely in Drive X:,
right-click in Drive D: and Delete Volume.

5. Right-click on Drive X: and Change Drive Letter and Paths. Change X:
to D:.

6. Verify that you now have Free Space of about 360 GB between Drive C:
and Drive D:.

7. Right-click on Drive C: and Extend Volume. Let the Wizard default to
use ALL the available space.

8. Done!

Your Drive C: should now be about 410 GB (the original 50 plus the 360
extended). Drive D: should be about 50 GB. There should be no remaining
Free Space.

My numbers are only suggestions, of course. If 10 GB is enough for your
Drive D:, you could easily adjust those numbers. (Note that Extend Volume
deals in MB, not GB; if you want to extend by 10 GB, type in 10,000.) Will
410 GB in Drive C: be enough for your gaming?

All this should probably take less than 10 minutes if you hurry - but don't
hurry! Take your time. You still should be all done within an hour. And
using no hardware or software except what you already have.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 RC 7100

 

[Ricky]

There was a way to do this in DOS, I did it long long time ago, like 20+
years ago when 10mb was the common HD size and 20mb was top of the
line., But I have long since forgotten the dos commands.


Try to google it or look at an old dos manual. Msdos 3.1 ring a bell?

If you can find it. I am pretty sure it involved autoexec.bat and/or a
config.sys line or two in each, to make it work. But then I haven't
really tried that in years.

I think fragmentation might become a problem though.