combining ssd and hdd into one drive

[sup3r_b0wlz]

Okay I have no idea if this is possible but I'm curious if there's any software out there or anyway to do this.

Here's my situation:
128GB OCZ vertex 4 SSD (for now OS drive/one or two games/download etc.)
320GB HDD (data, music, games other big files)
1TB HDD (used as external drive for now)

My question is can merge my SSD and HDD into one drive so it shows up as one in windows? I've been searching around but cant find an answer.

what I want is to be able to not have to worry about where stuff is saving and how full my SSD is and stuff. I want software to figure that out for me. so like it would be a cache for my HDD.

can storage pools built into Win 8 do this? I heard that you cant boot from it though

Thanks in advanced for any responses!

(P.S. I have windows 7 ATM but I am going to upgrade to win 8 very soon and would like to do this all in one process if I decide to)

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Seagate's been making them for years .... and from experience, they rock. I have lappies with SSD and HD and others w/ Momentus and unless someone looks of runs benchies, ya cant tell which one is which.

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=806&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=9

 

[sup3r_b0wlz]

I don't want to buy anything else. can I create one through software or some kind of raid type thing?

 

[inotus]

It sounds like you have a pretty good set-up and something I'm looking to try out (OS and main programs on a fast-but-small SSD, and everything else on a slow-but-large HDD).

From what I've read about RAID configurations: I'm not sure if you could combine an SSD and an HDD into one drive, but if you could, the data would be mixed between the two drives, which would mean you'd be slowed down to HDD speeds (which would defeat the purpose of having an SSD).

 

[hang-the-9]

You can do what you want, but the result won't be what you want. They make hybrid drives to speed things up, but you need a special drive controller to work that way.

What you want to do is called JBOD (just a bunch of disks), combining different disks into one large volume. I do not think you can set that up with a boot drive. But as I said, it won't have the effect you want, will just add some seamless capacity without any speed increase.

 

[YouSearch]

I just did this use RAID i booted up Bios and set the hard drives to RAID when you reboot it will said press ctrl + a to set up RAID you want to set them as a RAID 0 this will make them one drive only bad thing about this is if you merge a 1tb and a 512gb hard drive you will end up with a 1tb drive because it will only let each be the size of the smallest drive. Im not sure how the speed will be but i did merge a SSD with a HDD im hoping it will help Im indexing the internet so im hoping two hard drives will be faster then one i dont know tho we'll see!

 

[hang-the-9]

If you setup a SSD and a regular hard-drive in RAID, you will make the system slower than if you just used your SSD. SSD drive access is so much faster than a regular hard drive, each time the computer will go to the other drive to get data, it will be slowing down the system. It's like having two runners but each one can only run for 10 feet at a time. You take a slow and a fast one, you will have a slower average than if you could have only the faster one run.