Hi guys,

just got a warning my main harddrive is full. I have another harddrive built in already and i would love to extend my boot harddrive (Macintosh HD) with this one.

Does anybody know how to do so?

 

@musicislife

That's possible with a raid setup if I am right. In a raid setup the hard drvies are combined with each other and work with each other whereby the files are divided on these hard drives. A raid setup is not always possible, because your motherboard should also support it I thought.

 

#1 DO NOT DO IT !!!!!

#2 back up first

#3 Now I will show u HOW TO DO IT !!!


in WINDOWS 10 right click "THIS PC" and select MANAGE
go to DISK MANAGER

Right click the hard drive you want to make bigger and select EXTEND

If you have an expty drive - they will basically be glued together...


NOTE - this comes at the higher risk of data loss...

BACK UP FIRST !!!











note: I just woke up 30 seconds ago - so if I left something out - pls feel free to add ... anyone...

 

You can, but if you use RAID0 to extend HDs, and one HD fails, all your files are toast. The best way imo on a home PC, is to simply just move files to the empty HD. (BUT ONLY if it's not in any RAID(1) config already!!)

They said mac

 

Only make a striped array if you have good data backup habits. As well as giving the appearance of one seamless disc, there can also be a performance advantage, but there's an increased risk of losing all your data by putting all your metaphorical eggs in one basket -- as has already been mentioned.

You can use Disk Utility in OSX to do so, but you should absolutely make multiple backups of your system before attempting such things.

 

musicislife,

I am not a MAC guy, but in the PC world you can clone as existing drive to as larger one. So, if I have a 1TB dive, I can clone a 2+TB drive and during the cloning process confirm to use the entire capacity of the cloned drive.

 

Yes, that's true. Actually most people only use raid setups for better speed and reliability. Especially with SSD's, but it can really help with storage aswell.

RAID 0 is fast, but indeed not very reliable. That's why back-ups are indeed handy. Having a good back-up is your best friend in this case, while a good option to store this is on a external hard drive for example. It's pretty important to not connect the hard drive with your PC anymore after the back-up is done and is on it. This is because let's say you get a virus or something, then it still can do damage to this hard drive aswell.

I'm not sure, but is RAID 0 not the fastest one compared to all these other raids you have?

 

risk of data loss doubles this way,

best bet is to get rid of data on your main HD
or
clone it to a bigger one, making that one your new main.

you can use CarbonCopyCloner to do this easily
the 30 day free trial period should be enough to get this done ;)

https://bombich.com

do not delete your actual main before you have your new one running properly some days.

 

You can mount a drive withing an other drive in Unix, not sure what you would gain, the OS will still treat them as separate drives under the hood. If you are using a strict version of HFS / HFS+ you could have problems accessing the data if the boot drive fails, unless you are prepared ahead of time.

It's all a bit complicate, I think @saltwater advice is solid. It is what how I have done it before and how I would do it again when the need arises.

 

I do this mounting a drive within another drive in windows also...

ADVANTAGE:

browse your system for c:\Samples

and you are actually looking in D: <root>

This allows you to "grow" your PC by adding additional hard drives and not have to worry about any major changes or reformatting.
The little known feature has been in both OS's for ages



In the above example you can change the E: drive to actually be C:\Samples, etc