New external hard drive problems

[shanemckay]

Hello all, I have just bought and installed a new 120GB external hard drive. My current internal default c drive was running out of space fast as it only has 40 GB. Is there any way that I can make both external and internal drives act as one on Windoows XP and take up the combined 160GB total and show up as a single c Drive in My Computer? I have Partition Magic 8 but I am a computer novice. If not, what do I have to leave on C Drive and what can I move to my new exteral drive so as not to danage my pc?

 

[wahnula]

shanemckay,

You cannot use both drives together as a single volume with a single letter, and you would not want to anyway (JBOD is dangerous). Stuff you should leave on the current C: drive is the Operating System and all program files. You can safely relocate your My Documents folder to your new drive, that makes for easy backup, but might slow down transfer. You do have another drive for backing up all those meaningful files and photos, don't you? It's a question of WHEN and not IF a hard drive will fail, so start thinking about a backup plan.

Right-click My Documents, Properties, Move, then select the new drive. Windows will remember this location and copy over your My Documents to the new drive, and any time in the future when you select My Documents you will be reading from/writing to the new drive.

You will always have slack (unused space on a drive) so you are best off always getting the biggest drive you can afford.

Tony

 

[shanemckay]

Thanks

shane