Make 2 sata drives 1

[Mainevent422]

Hello all,

I have 3 hard drives in my computer / a 500gb runs my operating system / a 1TB storage drive which has 600GB of used space/ and a brand new 1.5TB drive.

I want to know how to make my two storage drives into one (so that i have ONE location to save my files) and then i will partition off 500GB for Backup...

Please help!

 

[someguynamedmatt]

You're looking at a RAID or JBOD Array. First of all, what type of computer are you using? If you have a decent motherboard, you can probably acess your BIOS and set this up, but you'd lose all the information on them once you set up the array. You'd have to back everything up somehow, first...
RAID 0 (Striping) combines the drives and splits your data between the two disks so that it has better read/write performance, but if one of the drives fail, you'd lose anything that was stored on the array. RAID 1 (Mirroring) combines them and then writes a copy of the same information to both drives, so that if one drive fails, the other can be used to retrieve your information, at a slight performance cost JBOD, or "Just a bunch of disks", combines them into one disk, without doing anything extra - it just adds them together.
In RAID 0, your capacity is the smallest disk size times two. In RAID 1, it's just the smallest disk size. And in JBOD, it's both disks added together.
More information on this is in the RAID section of the storage forums.
Good luck! I'm sure more people can help you out if you need it.

 

[Mainevent422]

I dont know anything about raid....

This is my motherboard
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5501864&CatId=3461

The motherboard is msi and has four sata plug ins....
I dont know about raid.,

i have another portable 500gb drive i could use to put stuff on, but i wouldnt know the first thing about trying to go into bios and change the setting

I would be interested in maybe doing raid...please tell me more...

 

[Mainevent422]

This is the hard drive i have

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ZCXJZE/ref=oss_product

 

[Mainevent422]

in my bios is says Raid option "IDE"


...

 

[someguynamedmatt]

Hmm... I just did a quick search on that motherboard, and according to the MSI website, there isn't any onboard RAID support for that motherboard. There are other ways to do this, though... I wouldn't give up just yet...
You don't have any PCI or PCI-e slots open, do you?

 

[Mainevent422]

i have 1 pci-e My nvidia card is in there

i have 2 pci slots, one has a wireless card it in

I bought a soundblaster card, but had to send it back i think aleady have onboard sound

The other slot is empty.

But i just cannot see buying a raid controller for like 50 bucks when all i want to do is merge the two together

 

[someguynamedmatt]

Well, I just ran out of options, then. Even if you did feel like dishing out the money for a RAID controller, I don't know if you would be able go find one that would fit into a regular PCI slot.
Sorry, but my knowledge just ran out. If you want to keep trying, you could always ask the experts in the RAID section... I'm sure they could figure something out for you.
Well, good luck. I hope that you can get something working...

 

[Mainevent422]

http://cgi.ebay.com/4-Port-SATA-SERIAL-ATA-PCI-I-O-CONTROLLER-RAID-PC-CARD_W0QQitemZ400107430520QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item5d2842e278


???????

Is'nt this pci? Wouldnt it work?

 

[someguynamedmatt]

Actually, I think that it is. I just found it on NewEgg, too, and it's actually fairly close to the price on the eBay listing you found.

I'd do a little more research on this if I were you, though... I'm not quite sure what speeds you would get out of a PCI Controller card. Another question to ask the RAID guys, I guess.

 

[Mainevent422]

Best answer selected by Mainevent422.

 

[Mainevent422]

Thanks for your help matt, i may get that when i get some money