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I don't know how to extend C Drive (in my SSD: 256GB) to my HDD (1TB), Is there a good way? I know in some IOs it will make my speed equal to HDD (in those which gonna be written on HDD obviously but, if it decreases all IO speed to HDD tell it to me) I attempt to search for "making a partition in another drive and append it" but I got no good results on the internet over how to do it, also I don't know much about RAIDs I feel maybe they have a solution for me but they are "wipe them all first" actions and that makes me worried to take any action, also I do not have a backup or storage to back up into. so don't tell me to back up and do action x also I'm a noob in StackExchange if I'm in a wrong place, please tell me

OS: windows

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The only way you can accomplish this if both drives are in a RAID type of configuration. This can be achieved using a hardware RAID and software RAID. If you use a hardware RAID, you will have to format all drives that you want to use before you can setup a striped RAID. Software Raid can be converted into a dynamic disk without format though.

For Software you only have to make sure you have enough room on one of the drives so you can expand the other partition into that drive.

If you are on Windows, you can open Disk Management, convert your drives to a dynamic disk and then expand a partition to another drive.

There is a caveat, once your disk has been converted to a dynamic disk, it is windows only. You cannot dualboot another non-windows OS. Also, converting back to a non-dynamic disk can only be done by completely erasing the disk.

I cannot tell you how much it will affect speed, but chances are big that the speed will be greatly reduced for every file as a striped volume will write data to both drives for every file to spread the load.

Now... that said, there are other tricks you can do that somewhat do what you want.

Instead of expanding one partition into another drive, you can create mount points on one drive that redirect to another partition.

This essentially means that you could have your entire steam library on your C drive, move that to the D drive, then create a mount point on the C drive and everything works again without having to reinstall any game.

There are multiple ways to do this. From disk management, you can add a drive letter to any drive, but also a folder path. That folder cannot exist yet, but you can first rename the old folder to something else, create that mount point, then move all data from the old folder to the new folder.

Another way is by using mklink from a command prompt run as administrator. This allows you to create a junction between two places somewhere on your drives.

You could make C:\MyGames be a junction that points to D:\Games\Relocated

From that point you can find your games both at C:\MyGames and D:\Games\Relocated.

In all cases, even though you have a folder on C:... it is replaced with a mount point, so the actual data is not on C and thus not taking up space.

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  • Wouldn't most RAID configurations limit the size of the RAID array to the smallest device in the array itself? You might be able to get away with it with something like Storage Sense which basically RAID but has some small differences. RAID 1 would at least required 2 devices of the same size (since RAID 1 is mirror). I can't imagine RAID 0 in a situation like this, since you would lose all data on the RAID, if either device failed.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 17:49
  • @Ramhound Only with a raid configuration that has a mirrored setting (0 or 5) but with striped, there's not such limitation. Also with a dynamic disk, there's no limit for that either unless you a mirrored partition.
    – LPChip
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 17:57
  • actually, the most space consuming thing on my system is WSL, and I have wsl2, so I can't move them freely with lxrunoffline, also I wish you may edit the answer in a way it includes more descriptions about how to make mount point in windows, for example, I have a dir of WSL how I can move it another place with those mount points? and if it writes in both drives then for sure raid is an awful suggestion for my case, also I already converted to dynamic cause I thought there is a way but it seems I just trapped me in this case. anyways thanks for the complete description
    – AARMN
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 19:00
  • @AARMN - You certainly could move them. Just export them and import them from their new location, or even an easier solution, move them to a different drive through Windows Store.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 20:02
  • @Ramhound I tried to move my WSL with wsl.exe command and exported and imported and it works fine and helped me a lot, the "Windows Store" way u mentioned I have no clue how I should do that btw, and I got survived, just an issue that after reimport my default user is root, but it's fine (and a new problem topic) so thanks everyone, I'll choose this post as accepted answer, but I wish LPChip edit his answer to include some more details about that mounting, for future people who reach here with searching!
    – AARMN
    Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 21:40
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If you use the Disk Management that comes with Windows to complete it, it will be a bit difficult because there are many restrictions. But with the help of third-party tools, things are much simpler. AOMEI Partition Assistant can help you convert a disk into a dynamic disk, and then expand a simple volume to a spanned volume, which solves the problem of expanding one partition to another drive.

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  • Can you address the issue of speed?
    – Charles Kenyon
    Commented Aug 3, 2021 at 17:17
  • speed would be as low as HDD or less? if no, I test it, and if I verify it, this answer would be selected
    – AARMN
    Commented Aug 12, 2021 at 23:53

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