Merge Two Folders To Act As One (Software Raid 0?)

Using Windows 7, I'm trying to setup what I've come to call a "Software Raid of Folders", not completely sure it's the right term, but I'm sure anyone who knows the true term will understand what I'm getting at.

I have two folders, on two seperate harddrive, I would like to "merge" these folders while keeping them on seperate harddrive so they act as one folder. Example:

Music and Videos are to be merged together to a new folder called "Merged"

Music runs off of Harddrive 1

Videos runs off of Harddrive 2

Anything new saved inside Merged is saved within Videos that runs off of Harddrive 2

Now you see how I came up with the term "Software Raid", it's like an average RAID 0 setup, but instead I want to do it with just two specific folders on two different drives within Windows. Any help on this is apprecieated!

Dustin

Posted 2013-03-30T13:33:26.513

Reputation: 677

2Why will new things be saved on Harddrive 2 as opposed to Harddrive 1? I think software raid is a bad analogy here. – aland – 2013-03-30T14:27:40.030

This sounds an awful lot like 7's in-built "Libraries". Why not just use those? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2013-03-30T14:57:38.287

Essentially it's for a Server with a lot of data stored on it, another harddrive was added but they can't reconfigured their hardware RAID. So I'm looking for a software alternative as the software they are using completely works out of one folder. And Libraries? I wasn't aware they were customizable. How would you go about it? – Dustin – 2013-03-30T19:13:40.223

why can't they reconfigure hardware RAID? Seems like a pretty typical operation. – aland – 2013-03-30T19:54:51.257

As far as I knew, it would require a full reinstallation of the server wouldn't it? – Dustin – 2013-03-30T20:24:12.467

Should need a reinstall, but it would depend on the array controller. – aland – 2013-03-30T21:10:44.873

Shouldn't need an install I mean. – aland – 2013-03-30T22:27:11.687

Answers

Check out junctions,

You could have a folder, let's call it Merged Within that you have two subfolders Videos and Music and each of these sub folders contents reisde on different hdd.

Open a command prompt to the Merged directory and type the following, replacing with the name of the folder, e.g. Music and with the destination, e.g. D:\Music

mklink /j <junction_point_name> <target>

aland

Posted 2013-03-30T13:33:26.513

Reputation: 498

Hang on, this creates two seperate folders, right? Instead of merging two? – Dustin – 2013-03-30T19:14:42.743

that's correct. see my comment on your question - how should it know which filesystem to save files to? – aland – 2013-03-30T19:53:21.393

You may consider using spanned volumes then if the data must not be in subfolders. However you'll need to make a backup of all the data from the existing volumes as it's a destructive process.

"Spanned volumes are a dynamic volume consisting of disk space on more than one physical disk."

aland

Posted 2013-03-30T13:33:26.513

Reputation: 498

The only way I can see this working from my experience is using unallocated space of the same size on each of the additional HDD to create a Software raid using Windows disk manager, then if you want that to be a folder, then map it as a Folder when formatting it. I might be able to make a video of that once my Raid 5 finishes rebuilding.

DeLaguna

Posted 2013-03-30T13:33:26.513

Reputation: 11

Howerever you could just symlink the music and video folders – DeLaguna – 2015-04-29T16:39:53.167

When looking at the edited questions, it does seem that creating a folder with two sym links in it is probably the best way to create your solution. So aland's answer is probably the most correct however there is a couple programs that you can use that would make symlinking easier than command line if you struggle with that sort of thing. The sym links are what let the OS know where the data is actually going, however, it will seem like all the data is on the HDD with the "Merged" folder. Good luck. – DeLaguna – 2017-07-10T13:40:43.927