How To Use Multiple Hard Drives Windows 10

When y'all have multiple hard drives on your computer, it tin can quickly go hard to keep runway where your files are located. However, similar to previous versions, Windows ten includes ii features that tin can enable you to combine all the drives on your PC into a single large book.

These two features are known as "Spanned" and "Striped" volumes, and both offer like functionality, only they use unlike methods to write information to the difficult drive.

If y'all use a Spanned volume, you tin combine two or more than difficult drives of different sizes to create one large volume. On Spanned, drives are utilize sequentially, meaning data won't be written to the second hard bulldoze until the first hard drive is full.

On the other mitt, if you utilise a Striped volume, you lot can likewise combine two or more than hard drives to create i large volume. However, if you want to utilize the entire available space, you'll demand to use difficult drives of the aforementioned size. On Striped, data is written beyond all participating drives, offering meliorate performance than the Spanned option.

In this Windows ten guide, we'll walk you through the steps creating i large volume combining multiple hard drives.

How to combine multiple hard drives into one large volume

It'south important to note that you will erase the content of the hard drives participating of the Spanned or Striped volume, every bit such brand sure to backup the data earlier proceeding.

Use the Windows key + X keyboard shortcut to open up the Power User menu and select Disk Direction.
Right-click the hard bulldoze book and select Delete volume.
Click Yeah to confirm the deletion of the current volume and all its content.
Repeat steps two and three on the hard drives you lot want to combine.
Right-click the unallocated space of the bulldoze and select New Striped Volume (or New Spanned Volume).
Click Next.
Select the boosted disks, one by 1, and click Add.
Click Next.
Leave the default drive letter assignment and click Next.
Make sure the file system is set to NTFS, allocation unit of measurement size is set to default, and cull a volume label.
Check the Perform a quick format option.
Click Adjacent.
Click Finish.
You'll exist prompted to convert the hard bulldoze from basic to dynamic, click Yes to complete the task.

Another departure between these two solutions is that you lot can easily add more hard drives to your computer to extend a Spanned volume, something that is not supported on Striped volumes.

The only caveat with these solutions is that you cannot employ hard drives containing a Windows installation as the operating organisation tin can't boot from a Dynamic deejay. In add-on, both Spanned and Striped volumes exercise not use parity, which means they the don't provide fault tolerance — if one drive fails you volition lose the data on all difficult drives —so make certain to create regular backups of your figurer.

The best solution for you will depend on what yous're trying to accomplish. If you're looking to combine dissimilar hard bulldoze sizes to create a large volume, then your meliorate selection may be Spanned volume. If you're looking to increase read and write functioning, while creating a large volume from multiple drives, peradventure Striped volume is the best solution.

While you can employ Spanned or Striped volume on Windows 10 Home and Windows x Pro, you tin also employ these instructions on Windows 8.ane and even Windows 7.

Finally, it'southward worth pointing out that thanks to Windows 10 flexibility, you can too use Storage Spaces to create a single book using multiple drives.

More than Windows x resources

For more help manufactures, coverage, and answers on Windows 10, you lot tin can visit the following resource:

Windows 10 on Windows Primal – All you lot need to know
Windows ten aid, tips, and tricks
Windows x forums on Windows Central

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