Is it possible to "assimilate" an external HD?

[KF Daddy]

Friend of mine has a Dell computer at home and he hooked up an external
Maxtor 40GB USB drive to it for backup purposes. He says somehow the PC has
taken the 40GB and added it to the internal HD so he now shows one large 70
odd GB drive instead of two separate drives in My Computer. When he moves
the drive to his laptop or his PC at work it's treated as an external drive
with it's own drive letter, etc.

The home PC is not now and never has been connected to the internet. Running
XP SP2. Don't know any other specifics on the computer but I can get them if
needed.

Never heard of such a thing happening. Is it possible for a computer to
accidentally or on purpose get confused in this way and combine the two
drives into one? If so, is there a way to undo it? If it's not possible what
could be causing the erroneous indications?

TIA

KFD

 

[Rock]

Friend of mine has a Dell computer at home and he hooked up an external
Maxtor 40GB USB drive to it for backup purposes. He says somehow the PC has
taken the 40GB and added it to the internal HD so he now shows one large 70
odd GB drive instead of two separate drives in My Computer. When he moves
the drive to his laptop or his PC at work it's treated as an external drive
with it's own drive letter, etc.

The home PC is not now and never has been connected to the internet. Running
XP SP2. Don't know any other specifics on the computer but I can get them if
needed.

Never heard of such a thing happening. Is it possible for a computer to
accidentally or on purpose get confused in this way and combine the two
drives into one? If so, is there a way to undo it? If it's not possible what
could be causing the erroneous indications?

TIA

KFD

You can "mount" a volume into an empty NTFS folder on the host volume.
The volume then appears as part of the directory structure of the
hosting volume. The mounted volume is represented by a drive icon
rather than a folder in the host directory structure.

To do this you would first create an empty folder on the host volume,
then go to disk management, right click on the volume to be mounted,
choose Change drive letter and paths, add, then type in the path to the
empty NTFS target folder.

I don't know if this can be done with external drives.

 

[KF Daddy]

thanks for the info. I'll pass it on to my friend and see what happens.

 

[Rock]

You can "mount" a volume into an empty NTFS folder on the host volume.
The volume then appears as part of the directory structure of the
hosting volume. The mounted volume is represented by a drive icon
rather than a folder in the host directory structure.

To do this you would first create an empty folder on the host volume,
then go to disk management, right click on the volume to be mounted,
choose Change drive letter and paths, add, then type in the path to the
empty NTFS target folder.

I don't know if this can be done with external drives.

You're welcome.