2 SATA Drives - 1 drive letter in WINXP

[anthonyfellows]

Is there a way to fool WinXp into thinking that two physical sata drives are actually one drive? I have a media center pc with a 500gb drive and a 750gb drive ... No OS installed on either drive. The combined storage space is used for video files and I'm wanting the share name to be the same for each so when I access the share from another network location, it appears that both drives are one. I'm looking to avoid having two different shares.

[ddawson24]

You could do a RAID set up but that isn't really fooling XP. If you did a RAID 0 you would lose 250gb since it would basically double your smallest drive in your situation. You also need either a motherboard that supports RAID or you need to get a card to do it (like a promise card). If I were you I would purchase a new 750gb drive and then do the RAID 0. That would give you 1500gb of storage and it would show up as one large drive. You can also get external enclosures that can do this for you as well. If your computer has an e-sata port that is the fastest connection. I've seen some things through usb and firewire but I wouldn't want a drive that large to be connected through a slower port.

[jagabo]

Using the Disk Management utility you can choose to make a partition appear as a folder on another drive when you create a new one.

[anthonyfellows]

You can make a second disk appear as a folder on another drive.

I can't link one folder to two drives and share it as one though, correct? I want the end result to be one drive mapping that shows the contents of both drives. It's all for video storage, so what I'm wanting is \\server\video to display the contents of both drives.

Alternatively, I can do \\server\video a-l and \\server\video m-z ... but I'd rather have it all in one share.

[TBoneit]

Deleted

[KBeee]

You could do a JBOD raid setup if your MB supports it.

[jagabo]

You can make a second disk appear as a folder on another drive.

I can't link one folder to two drives and share it as one though, correct? I want the end result to be one drive mapping that shows the contents of both drives. It's all for video storage, so what I'm wanting is \\server\video to display the contents of both drives.

Alternatively, I can do \\server\video a-l and \\server\video m-z ... but I'd rather have it all in one share.

I think you can make the new drive a folder within a shared folder, thereby having only one share.

[kosz]

in win xp go to disk management and do dynamic disks both drives will appear as 1 drive

[TBoneit]

in win xp go to disk management and do dynamic disks both drives will appear as 1 drive

XP Pro not home.
Note: Dynamic disks are not supported on portable computers or on Windows XP Home Edition-based computers.

Other caveat: after you convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk, the dynamic volumes cannot be changed back to partitions. You must first delete all dynamic volumes on the disk and then convert the dynamic disk back to a basic disk. If you want to keep your data, you must first back up the data or move it to another volume.

More info here http://www.petri.co.il/difference_between_basic_and_dynamic_disks_in_windows_xp_2000_2003.htm
or here http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=XP+Dynamic+discs
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314343

Cheers