Treat 2 or more folders as one?

[Zippydsmlee]

Outside of duplicate file finder programs is there anything that will let me make one massive folder thats one 2 or 3 different hard drives? At the most I would need it to display everything as one folder so I can skim through it quickly and arrange or move things around.

 

[MilesAhead]

I haven't used Dynamic Disks myself. But from the description it may do what you want. It is supposed to allow an "extent" as they call it, to span multiple physical disks.

What Are Dynamic Disks and Volumes?: Storage Services

A system builder would know more than I though.

Edit: If that is not feasible another approach would be to use hard links as done in Linux. Create a hard link on one physical drive to point to a folder on another. This hard link should be seen as a subfolder of the top level folder that needs more storage than one disk can provide. You can do this with several "folders" as needed. I believe in Tutorials there may be a right click handler to create hard links.

Note I found this link:

Link Shell Extension

 

[logicearth]

Ummm...that is the function of Libraries in Windows 7.

Libraries takes multiple folders, puts them all as a single view.

 

[jimbo45]

Outside of duplicate file finder programs is there anything that will let me make one massive folder thats one 2 or 3 different hard drives? At the most I would need it to display everything as one folder so I can skim through it quickly and arrange or move things around.

Hi there
the best way of doing this is to use Storage spaces - however the Bad news is that it won't run on Windows 7.

What you COULD do is to create a very small W10 or W8.1 Virtual machine - attach two or more Hdd's to the VM and create a storage space. Create a folder in the storage space and share that with the W7 machine.

The advantage of storage spaces is you can aggregate several volumes into a single storage pool --they can (unlike RAID) be separate size volumes too. For example say you have 1 TB and a 2 TB external HDD you can aggregate this to a 3 TB storage space. Specify a % for a recovery area say 15% and you are good to go. The data will be spilt between the two HDD's optimally by the OS - you don't have to worry where or what HDD it's on. Want more space just add another HDD (any size) dynamically.

This feature unfortunately won't be backported to W7 though which is why I suggest use a VM (or if you've a spare machine around download the Free W10 preview) just to create the storage space and share it.

Libraries are a bit of an abomination and are increasingly being deprecated. Storage spaces are much better.

Here's some more info.

Storage Spaces: FAQ - Windows Help

Cheers
jimbo

 

[doctore]

Ummm...that is the function of Libraries in Windows 7.

Libraries takes multiple folders, puts them all as a single view.

+1

Don't understand why others are taking the hard path, when all you have to do is create a folder on those drives and add them to a Library (custom or otherwise).

Alternatively, you can RAID some drives.

 

[Zippydsmlee]

Thanks guys I will look into things!

Ummm...that is the function of Libraries in Windows 7.

Libraries takes multiple folders, puts them all as a single view.

But what dose it do with duplicutes? I'd like it to just overwrite the oldest with the newest but that should not be a huge problem if it can not as I do not have that many duplicates running around it's just I am trying to find a simple drag and drop and forget solution when adding new stuff.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

If all you are trying to do is combine two folders into one and get rid of duplicate files, just copy and paste (or drag and drop) the contents of the newest folder into the oldest folder; select all the files you want to move first so you can do it in one operation. When the window pops up giving options on what to do about, just click on the one saying to replace the duplicate file with the you are pasting from the other folder. There also is a check box that tells Windows to do the same with any other duplicates.

 

[MilesAhead]

In Windows it seems one must use Junction Points to span physical volumes on the same machine, rather than hard links. It appears hard links are limited to the same physical drive.

Edit: Meaning of the choice of hard link, junction point or symbolic link.. not talking about other alternatives.