Windows 7 - Internal Hard Drive acting like an External Hard Drive

Hi guys,

I'm new on any sort of forums so go easy if it's a stupid question..but here goes.

Me and my brother built me a new computer from scratch (he did the building - i did the watching).

To cut a long story short - I purchased an internal hard drive from Overclockers UK. It's a Samsung 1TB drive. I also have a 64 Solid-state drive in there as my primary hard drive that Windows was installed on and a couple of programs are installed on. My storage disk (the 1TB disk) is for all my music/films etc. Whenever I drag and drop a file into the Samsung hard-drive - it copies it rather than moves it instantly.

When I had a laptop, I had 3 external hard drives and this is the way it copied files onto them.

Does anyone know how I can get the internal drive to stop acting like an external drive?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

This is the way it works. I have an 80GB SSD and an internal HDD and the same happens if the file/folder is large enough. If you just copy a few MBs, you will not see the window with the green stripe running. But if e.g. you copy 500MBs, you will see it. It physically moves the data. That is different if you copy on the same volume from one folder to another. Then it only makes an entry in the MFT.

thanks for the reply.

It does make sense now you say it. I'll just have to make sure my default download directories are all set to my Samsung 1TB drive. Is there a way to make the 1tb drive my "primary" drive so all programs, all downloads etc etc are installed onto that one rather than the smaller (rapidly running out of space!) Solid state drive?

One other quick question. When you drag and drop into the samsung 1tb - it copies the file into the drive. is there any way to automatically make it move rather than copy. I understand if they are large files - it'll still come up with the small window saying "moving" or "copying". But is there a way to make it automatically move rather than copy?

Thanks in advance

You can over-ride the copy and make it a move by holding the shift key as you drag the file or folder.

Each program has its own configuration method for its default data drive, so if downloads are your problem, set the download location in your browser.

1. Drag and drop is not so swift in my book. I suggest you use Move to folder, Copy to folder
2. When you say "save" for a download, set the right folder (in your case on the 1TB disk) to where you want to save. You can also set that in your browser - in IE under "Page" and "Save as".

Hold down the shift key while you drag and drop = move
Hold down the ctrl key while you drag and drop = copy

This protocol goes back a long way in Windows. It is also worth noting that Windows (at least some versions) remembers your last choice, so it becomes the default for the next operation. That gets the best of me sometimes when I don't lnow what I did last!

Cheers
Warren

does it also still work like it does in XP to cut and paste files to move them? can't remember about the cmd shell's move command across drives, haven't tried that for a while.