How do I split one drive into two or vice versa?

[krah]

I'm uh...making this visual basic program and errr...I need to know how to split one drive into multiple drives and take multiple drives and make them into one. For it to, you know, work.

ALRIGHT I CONFESS!!!!!!
I don't need it for a vb program. But I do need to know how to do it. It's just that you guys are so smart and it's so easy to get an answer around here! Please don't tell my mother...

[krah]

Oh yeah! Also, while we're on the topic of stuff that doesn't relate to vb, is it possible to hook up multiple hard drives at once to a single computer? So you could take 2 80 Gig hard drives and have 160 Gigs of space?

[crptcblade]

#1)It's called partitioning, look in your HD documentation on how to do it.
#2)Yes, it is entirely possible, and a pretty common practice.

[krah]

except that my harddrives each came with the computers. Meaning I don't have documentation on them. Is partitioning a complicated process? If not, please explain.

BTW- Is hard drive one word or two? Hard drive...harddrive...hummmm...

[crptcblade]

I know that my hard drive came with a user manual, and a CD with partitioning software on it. I don't know where you can find it if you don't already have it.

AND, I've always seen hard drive as two words.

[SteveCRM]

It is possible to have 2 hard drives. I used to have 2 hard drives in my computer.
A: = floppy C: hard drive D: = hard drive E: = CD
Im not sure how to split or join them, that was an option in the installation software.

[PRIVATE1]

Use the Dos utility "F-disk" to partition your drives .



[]P

[Guv]

First, you can have up to 4 physical IDE hard drives on a system (my system has 3). There is a different type of drive (SCSI, or something like this) which allows for more than 4 physical drives.

More than 3 IDE drives is impractical (you might have to do without a CD Drive). It is not difficult to install a second or third drive. On most systems, you have to go into the CMOS setup after installing a new drive (Hit delete when system is starting invokes CMOS setup on most systems).

Once you have data on a drive, you can use a utility called Partition Magic (PowerQuest Corp), which costs about $20-40 American. It will shrink or stretch existing partitions, add new partitions, et cetera without destroying data. I recommend it highly. There may be other similar utilities, but this is probably the best. This utility comes with software to allow you to install & use multiple operating systems, which is a fun thing to do.

A DOS utility called Fdisk is used to partition a new hard drive, and can be hacked without using a manual. Just be sure you know what you are doing before you commit yourself to actually doing something.

Fdisk destroys all data on a drive, so you usually do not use it on anything but a newly installed drive. After using Fdisk, you must use Format utility.

It is generally a good idea to partition drives bigger than 8-15 gigs. It makes for a more organized system, and defragging takes less time. Your drives tend not to fragment as much when you have multiple partitions on a drive.

If you want to make 2 20gig hard drive act like one 40gig hard drive (and this is assuming that they are two separate physical drives and not logical partitions), you are creating a RAID 1 configuration. NT can handle this natively (under Disk Administrator), but for 95 and 98, you will need a RAID controller, which is a bit of hardware that you plug your hard drives into. RAID 1 is also known as drive stripeing, and has the added bonus of doubling disk access speed, cos there are two pairs of heads reading at once.

- gaffa

[krah]

Thanks for all the info guys. It will really help my...program....out a lot. hehe...