How do I combine two physical HDs into one drive letter
 

I have a HP dv9540us laptop with two hard drives, how do I set them up so it'll only appear as one HD in windows with combined size?

You will have to raid them together. Does your laptop have an onboard raid controller?

JBOD is also an option, but RAID is better if it's supported.

donno... How do I find out?

the motherboard is Quanta 30CB and the last time checked I don't see RAID in BIOS. I think they're in SATA but i donno what that means either :D

Your computer still has to have a raid controller to do JBOD. It is a form of raid even though there is no stripping or redundancy.

It just be easier if ya set the drive up as a dynamic folder under your c drive. You'll have to wipe the partition and repartition through disk management in windows to do so. After your done, c:\whateveryouwant\ will be equal to hard disk 2. Note I've never done this, just due to what happens if ya wipe out your c drive and need to re-install. Though I imagine there some way to recover it.

here's the device manger screen. I don't think it has RAID controller.

http://i41.tinypic.com/33ddxcp.png

where can i find detailed instructions on how to setup dynamic folders?

First, disable the logo screen you get when the machine boots up. Can do that in bios.

If you have RAID, there will be a line that pops up during boot up that says something like 'press f6 to enter configuration utility'. If you don't see a prompt like that, you probably don't have RAID as an option on the mobo.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../bb726994.aspx

Should get ya started, note ya need something better the xp home installed on your pc though.

it shouldn't be different for Vista Ultimate SP1 should it?

nope should be pretty much the same

ICH8M does not support RAID, ICH8M-E does. It says above that you do not have the E varient so RAID is not available.

http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/313056.pdf

Edit: AFAIK, JBOD isn't possible either.

so in order to setup dynamic folder with C:/ and D:/ and C being system, do I have to delete D to make it unallocated?

also how can I make D into C:\Users? that folder cannot be deleted.

Like I've said I've never done it... Though from what I've read on that link, some disks can be upgraded to dynamic, otherwise you'll have to wipe it.

if the laptop doesnt support raid then your screwed and you cant use the windows software raid because you have to convert the drives to dynamic and if you do that then they are unbootable.