Is RAID the only way to combine hard drives?

[wallabing]

This is a newbie question, but is RAID the only way to combine hard drives into one big one?

Is there a way to combine lets say, a 80gb and 40gb hard drive together and get 120GB? I'm just looking at combining hard disks, not the performance or data security issues.

Because I dont know how to do it

 

[Tedster]

for a home computer - yes. RAID works best with identically sized drives.

 

[wallabing]

But is there technology to combine a 80gb + 40gb together to get 120gb?

 

[mikescorpio81]

Yes there is. If you have 2 HDD's and you wish to combine them together you can go into Computer Management (you are running XP aren't you??) - Disk Management. From there, convert both disks to Dynamic and create an extended partition.
RAID is more for fault tolerance rather than merging disks together, but of course it is designed too for such purposes. You lose a disk in a RAID set-up though.

If you require further assistance please let me know. :grinthumb

 

[wallabing]

Ok heres another twister, can I add a hard drive to my current hard drive with Windows xp installed, and do an extended partition with the new hard drive?

 

[mikescorpio81]

Safe mode on that one mate ... I beleive you can, but you are putting your trust into Microsoft on this one!

I have never done it, but I can't see the harm in trying (follow instructions above and BACK-UP beforehand!).

Please, please, PLEASE let me know how you go on this one! :grinthumb