How to combine multiple hard drives into a Volume on Windows 10

When you have multiple hard drives on your computer, managing data files, as well as locating files is extremely difficult. However, like previous versions, Windows 10 also has additional features that you can activate to combine all the drivers on your computer into a Volume.

Two features are Spanned Volume and Striped Volumes. Both of these features have the same function, the only difference between these two features is how to write data on the hard drive.

If using Spanned Volume, you can combine 2 or more different sized hard drives to create a large volume. On Spanned, the drives are sorted and used in order, meaning that after writing the data on the first drive, write data to the second drive.

Conversely, if using Stripped you can combine 2 or more hard drives to form a large Volume. However, if you want to use all available space, you must use hard drives of the same size. On Stripped, data is recorded on all participating drives, higher performance than Spanned.

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Combine multiple hard drives into one large Volume:

It is important to note that all your content will be deleted when you join Spanned Volume or Striped Volume, so backup your data before proceeding.

1. Press Windows + X key combination to open the Power User Menu. Here you click Disk Management .

2. Right-click the Volume and select Delete volume .

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3. Click Yes to confirm the delete of the current volume and all data in the volume.

4. Do the same steps 2 and 3 on the hard drive you want to combine.

5. Right-click any space on the drive and select New Striped Volume (or New Spanned Volume).

6. Click Next .

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7. Select the drive you want to add, select each drive, then click Add .

8. Click Next .

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9. Leave the default drive, then click Next.

10. Make sure the File System section is set to NTFS format, the Allocation unit size item set to Default and select a Volume label.

11. Check the option Perform a quick format .

12. Click Next .

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13. Click Finish .

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14. At this point on the screen you will be asked to convert the hard drive from Basic to Dynamic, click Yes to complete the process.

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Refer to some of the following articles:

1. How to split MS-DOS hard drive (FDISK)?

1. Instructions on how to create a RAM drive on Windows

1. How to recover lost files after repartitioning the hard drive?

Good luck!