Raid Harddrives

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Hello all, I need help trying to combine or make both of my harddrives appear as one. I just installed a new 120g harddrive about two weeks ago and I am trying to have the computer recognize as one because the startup disk(original harddrive) is getting full. I tried to do the raid through the disk utilities but it will not let me create any type of raids. I don't want to have to erase my whole 60g harddrive just to accomplish this task. Is there any other program out there that will let me do this? Is there something wrong with my computer?

I am operating a powermac g4 mdd 10.4.8.
 
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iMac Alum 20'' 2.4GHz | iMac G4 | iPod Silver Nano 2GB
For what your describing, you wanna do a "RAID 0 (Concatenation)" I believe you'll need drives of the same size to do so.
 
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Yes a raid 0. All the stuff that I read gives the impression that you can do it without having the same gigs. I just want to be able to use my computer without it saying low startup disk space. I would move my documents, music, and pictures files to the other hd but it only copies when I try to move it.
 
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MacBook Pro 2.0Ghz(CD)/512/80/128MB VRAM/15"
Collegestudent,

I think your on the right track but your slightly misguided. The "RAID" that your thinking of is more commonly known as "Dynamic Disc" in Microsoft Speak. Dynamic disk allows you to plug in drives into a spanned volume of disks and have the OS automatically resize your drives in a non destructive manner (aka you dont lose yoru shite).

Unfortunately since you already have stuff on your main volume you cannot make a raid 0 volume without having to repartition your volume as one (lose your stuff).

to answer "spindleX"'s comment, you do not necessairily need 2 drives of the same capacity, although, if you have a 40 + 60GB raid0 volume your total storage will only be 80GB because Raid0 will can only double the smallest drives size.

Wikipedia: RAID

Wiki will help you understand exactly what RAID is.

now, to solve your problem i'd reccomend setting your new drive up as an independent and separate volume and dump your docs, music, movies etc.. off your boot drive and onto your storage drive.

You mentioned that when you try and "move" files it only copies them... well, the obvious solution would be to copy them to your new "dump" drive and then delete the (now) redundant copies from your boot volume.

I would strongly reccomend against you using RAID (even IF your willing to format both drives.) RAID is not for the average joe, using raid0 you double your chances of a catastrophic failure (aka OH %$#& I LOST ALL MY $%&(ing STUFF!) because since your stuff is spanned over 2 drives, if one goes, your SOL.

Read over the Wiki link very carefully and understand what your getting into. I've had one too many novice customers try and create and use raid0 volumes and botch thier partitions.
 
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G5 Dual 2ghz 4GB Dual 500GB Sata
I agree with Digital. Having a second drive for backing up files and folders is a great bonus. You could even use it as a fresh install of OS X and then if your first drive goes down, you can boot from the spare. Also if you update and it has a problem you still have a working computer. I have a G4 with four drives installed. OS9 OSX ver 10.2 10.3 and now 10.4. My main machine, a G4 used as a server has three drives. Again two are for the system and the large 500GB is split into three volumes for files.

As for RAID, you really need 6 drives for a true raid, set up as 5 + 1 where if any one drive fails the system rebuilds using the +1 spare. Using 2 is really only good for mirror set ups where the second drive is an exact copy of the first.

Hope it helps.
 

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