[SOLVED] Incorporating old drives in a new build without cluttering the file system?

[Zporadik]

I am building a new system and am going to use a couple of SSDs from my outgoing system. I know what I'm doing with the hardware but I don't want to have a ton of drives with different letters in "This PC". I'd like to just have C: .

The new build will have a new 1 TB M.2 SSD as the boot drive and I'll be bringing a 1 TB 2.5" SSD and a 2 TB 2.5" SSD from the old PC.

Is it possible to set it up so they all show up and function as one drive in the file system? Or is tidiness not worth the negatives?

I've seen stuff about extended, striped, and spanned volumes but can't make any sense of the mixed and matched explanations

 

[mdd1963]

You really do not want to try to combine/span or RAID them... especially with differing sizes. (Hopefully, any new build would have an NVME drive, and you certainly do not want to kneecap it by linking it with slower SATA SSDs, even if it were possible)

Just delete (within disk management) existing partitions, quick format each one, and live with a couple of drives showing up as D and E... (Windows Storage Spaces might allow what you ant, but, at some point, usually complete data loss at the first glitch...you'd wish you had not heard of Storage SPaces.

 

[DSzymborski]

I am building a new system and am going to use a couple of SSDs from my outgoing system. I know what I'm doing with the hardware but I don't want to have a ton of drives with different letters in "This PC". I'd like to just have C: .

The new build will have a new 1 TB M.2 SSD as the boot drive and I'll be bringing a 1 TB 2.5" SSD and a 2 TB 2.5" SSD from the old PC.

Is it possible to set it up so they all show up and function as one drive in the file system? Or is tidiness not worth the negatives?

Tidiness is not worth the negatives. Increased ease of significant data loss plus significant increase in complexity vs. not having to see different letters in file explorer is an easy decision for me, though your mileage may vary.

 

[gggplaya]

What you need is called "JBOD" or Just a Bunch of Disks. JBOD simply spans disks together. As 1 disk fills up, it'll overflow data to the next disk. If a disk fails, most of the information from the remaining disk can be recovered using standard data recovery tools.

Windows 10 offers "Storage Spaces" to accomplish this. I believe JBOD is called "SIMPLE" in storage spaces. https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-storage-spaces-windows-10

I would not group the other drives with your NVME drive. I would group the Sata SSD's together as 1. Use that drive for slower items that don't require alot of speed like Movies, Pictures, Documents and games you don't play very often. Then use your NVME as it's own drive for fast things like your OS and games you play alot.

 

[USAFRet]

Personally, I like different individual drives and drive letters. (see my drive selection below)
I know where everything is.

Games on the G drive, CAD on the E, photo work on the H, etc, etc.

I would stay far far away from Storage Spaces. Avoid like COVID.


YMMV