HOW TO MERGE/COMBINE MULTIPLE DRIVE INTO ONE BIG DRIVE

                  HOW TO MERGE/COMBINE  MULTIPLE  DRIVE  INTO  ONE  BIG  DRIVE

     Do you have an old small usb or hard disk drive and you want to store or copy a large file and your drive is not enough to put that file in? Then you have come to the right place, because i am going to tell you how to make multiple drives into one and increase a drive space.  

                                                

       Windows operating system provide tool to make this happen, by using this tool you can make a SPANNED VOLUME or STRIPED VOLUME  which allow you to combine from 2 to 32 physical drives into one volume space,  if you don't know what is spanned and striped volume  click here to see the post which explain about them

     If a simple volume is not a system volume or boot volume, you can extend it across additional disks to create a spanned volume, or you can create a spanned volume in unallocated space on a dynamic disk.

     You need at least two dynamic disks to create a spanned volume. You can extend a spanned volume onto a maximum of 32 dynamic disks

NOTE:You need to be Administrator to do this

              To create a spanned volume using Windows interface

Step 1: Open Disk Management by type "diskmgmt.msc"   in a run box on start menu , Make sure that the disks you want to combine, are unformatted and don't contain any partitions

Step 2: Right-click on one of the drives you want to combine  then select  New Spanned  Volume.

Step 3: When the New Spanned Volume Wizard appears, click Next, then add the other disk(s) you want to combine, to the disk you already selected

Step 4: Complete the rest of the wizard, which involves selecting a drive letter and formatting the new volume.

                  To create a spanned volume using a command line

1.    Open a command prompt and type diskpart.

      2. At the DISKPART prompt, type list disk. Make note of the number of the disk where you want to create a simple volume.

       3. At the DISKPART prompt, type create volume simple [size=<size>] [disk=<disknumber>].

       4. At the DISKPART prompt, type list volume. Make note of the number of the simple volume you want to extend onto another disk.

5. At the DISKPART prompt, type select volume <volumenumber>. Select the simple volume volumenumber you want to extend onto another disk.

6. At the DISKPART prompt, type list disk. Make note of the number of the disk you want to extend the simple volume onto.

7. At the DISKPART prompt, type extend [size=<size>] [disk=<disknumber>]. Extends the

selected volume onto disk disknumber and makes the extension size=size megabytes (MB).

                To create a striped volume using Windows interface

 

Do the same as in spanned volume, but in step 2 you have to choose New Striped volume , and then Follow the instructions on your screen.

If you have any questions fell free to comment below and will do our best to give the best answer