Can I make the second hard drive an extended partition of the first hard drve?

Question

I have a computer with two hard drives. I used Windows XP disk to reinstall Windows, but when I did, it only gave me an option to delete one partition, which I did on the first drive. I want the second drive, which is 80GB, to be like an extended partition of the first so I can just use it to download music files, etc. I would not want programs to boot from it, just wanted it for storage. Which is best to do: leave as is with it reading as a separate drive or try to make it as extended partition? How would I be able to even make it into an extended partition at this point? When I go to disk management, gives option to delete partition and such, but not sure what to do?

Answer 1

If you're talking about two physical drives, rather than a C: and a D: that point to different partitions on a single drive, I don't know of any way of doing that.  Think of it:  If there were a way of making a partition straddle two drives, what would prevent the second drive from being physically removed and replaced with another drive with totally different files on it?

Other operating systems may support extended partitions, but as far as I know, Windows does not.

If you want to keep programs from residing on the second drive, just don't save them there.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

No. You should have deleted both during the install and then created one large drive.

Answer 3

Personally, I prefer having a separate drive for storing downloaded media.  I would leave it as is.