merging harddisks
- Thread starter neo36
- Start date
ElDiabloConCaca
U.S.D.A. Prime
Sure, it's called RAID. Make yourself a striped set with Apple's Disk Utility and there you go!
Your RAID will be the size of the smallest hard drive multiplied by two, so if you've got a 40GB and a 60GB hard drive, you'll have an 80GB striped RAID (40GB times two).
Making a RAID is the same as formatting, though, so you'll lose everything on the drives you're going to make the RAID out of. Also, I don't think it's possible to boot from a RAID, so that means you'll need at least three hard drives (one for the system, and two for the RAID).
Your RAID will be the size of the smallest hard drive multiplied by two, so if you've got a 40GB and a 60GB hard drive, you'll have an 80GB striped RAID (40GB times two).
Making a RAID is the same as formatting, though, so you'll lose everything on the drives you're going to make the RAID out of. Also, I don't think it's possible to boot from a RAID, so that means you'll need at least three hard drives (one for the system, and two for the RAID).
Arden
Where mah "any" keys at?
Neo, what did you have in mind? Did you want to merge 2 existing volumes to create one, which can't be done easily, or did you want to start with 2 blank drives? If so, do you want a drive that is larger than the two individual drives, or faster than either? There are a few different kinds of RAID arrays; tell us what you want and we'll help you achieve it.
i have two harddisk, one 60gig, one 80gig. i would like to have two volumes, one for the system, one for the data. because my 80gig drive is too small for the data drive, and the 60gig drive has space left, i thought of cutting perhaps 20gig from the systemvolume and merging it with the 80 gig drive...
ElDiabloConCaca
U.S.D.A. Prime
Whooo... I don't think that's possible right now with the tools available, although it sounds feasible.
Pengu
Digital Music Pimp
Of course it's possible!
Here's what you'll need:
One REALLY sharp kitchen knife,
Two hard drives as mentioned above,
Half a clove of garlic,
Two tablespoons of Olive oil.
Seriously though. It would be cool if this were possible but i dont think it is.
(what about hardware raid? Does the system even know its a raid, or does it treat it as one hard disk @ PCI slot, and let the card do the rest??)
Here's what you'll need:
One REALLY sharp kitchen knife,
Two hard drives as mentioned above,
Half a clove of garlic,
Two tablespoons of Olive oil.
Seriously though. It would be cool if this were possible but i dont think it is.
(what about hardware raid? Does the system even know its a raid, or does it treat it as one hard disk @ PCI slot, and let the card do the rest??)
Why not partition your drive? #, system, data, and backup, because time to time weird things happen, it's better to lose a partition than a drive, trust me, almost happened to me Tuesday, but I was able to copy the partition to a free partition, rebuilt that bad partition, and now no problems.
Carbon Copy Cloner will let you move your boot disk around while you repartition your drives - if that's the course you want to take.
You can't RAID two different-sized drives together, so forget about that.
On the other hand, if you feel like getting a second 80GB drive and selling your 60GB drive then you'll be able to RAID them together (striped, Level 0) and use them as if they were one big drive. I believe you can even arbitrarily partition the RAID once you've created it.
You can't RAID two different-sized drives together, so forget about that.
On the other hand, if you feel like getting a second 80GB drive and selling your 60GB drive then you'll be able to RAID them together (striped, Level 0) and use them as if they were one big drive. I believe you can even arbitrarily partition the RAID once you've created it.
Arden
Where mah "any" keys at?
According to ElDiablo, RAIDing two drives of different sizes will use the size of the smaller drive as its basis, so you'd get a superfast 60 GB drive or 120 GB of space. So either way, you'd be better off trading the 60 GB drive for an 80 GB drive.
Back up everything in whatever way you can, and RAID your drives. Then split off a 10 GB partition for your system, and you'll have lots of space left.
Back up everything in whatever way you can, and RAID your drives. Then split off a 10 GB partition for your system, and you'll have lots of space left.
Have you tried 1) a disk image of one of the drives, 2) copying the images file to the other, 3) reformatting the disk that was just imaged to the formatted size(s) you want it, and 4) CCCing the data over that was imaged?
Step and repeat for the second drive. This probably wasn't what you had in mind, but maybe it might spark some other ideas.
Step and repeat for the second drive. This probably wasn't what you had in mind, but maybe it might spark some other ideas.
ElDiabloConCaca
U.S.D.A. Prime
Yep, when I first stuck my 60GB and 40GB 7200RPM drives in my computer with an ATA100 PCI card, I thought trying out the software RAID in OS X would be cool -- so I striped those two drives, and voila! One 80GB drive appeared... that's 40GB x 2, not 40GB + 60GB. I believe that it also threw up some sort of warning dialog when I did this as well.