Concatenate a bunch of disks without RAIDing them?

[Asphodelus]

I have a couple of old SSDs. They're different manufacturers/models and more importantly have different capacities ranging from 64 GB to 256 GB, so RAID is out, but I'm wondering if there's any way to combine them all together so that Windows just sees 1 big drive?

 

[Bouowmx]

Spanned volume: data fills up drive 1, then 2, and so on..

As opposed to striped (RAID 0): data is split to equally fill each drive.

 

[Lordhumungus]

I use Stablebit DrivePool in my HTPC and have been very happy with it. It’s not a free solution at $30, but I feel that it’s worth it for my needs.

It also has a 30-day trial version if you want to check it out before committing to anything.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Windows can create a spanned volume without additional software. In Drive Management.

But if one of the drives fail, recovering the data on the remaining disks can be a bit hairy.

https://www.easeus.com/data-recovery/recover-files-from-spanned-volume.html

Do don't use it for anything important.

 

[Asphodelus]

Windows can create a spanned volume without additional software. In Drive Management.

But if one of the drives fail, recovering the data on the remaining disks can be a bit hairy.

https://www.easeus.com/data-recovery/recover-files-from-spanned-volume.html

Do don't use it for anything important.

I've had very little luck with Recuva in the past, even on a single disk within 5 minutes of the file being deleted, so it's not surprising that having a more complicated setup makes undelete programs even less reliable.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I've had very little luck with Recuva in the past, even on a single disk within 5 minutes of the file being deleted, so it's not surprising that having a more complicated setup makes undelete programs even less reliable.

Ok, then we're on the same page. Back your stuff up, because when a drive goes... well, like Master Splinter says; "Then, it is gone."

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Back in the day this used to be called JBOD, Just a Bunch of Disks. I'm not sure if that exists on modern RAID controller though.