Setting up hard drive with windows 7 64 Bit

GHOSTOWLGRID · 25 Nov 2014

Setting up hard drive with windows 7 64 Bit.

Hello all,

I have windows 7 pro 64 Bit, an ASUS G10AC desktop PC.

I have two Seagate 3 TB drives, and a 128 GB Kingston SSD drive.

The SSD drive is too small, windows 7 (despite me putting nothing but the OS on this drive) is a pig and ate all the free space. It is the OS, not me, I tried everyhting to no success.

Anyways, I was wondering. I migrated a full clone of my SSD drive onto one 3 TB hard drive, only issue is its an MBR drive, not a GPT drive.

I was wondering if I can do the following:

place MBR on Kingston SSD, have it point to a 3tb hard drive which is GPT.
Then in device manager, convert the 3TB drive to a dynamic disk and then mirror it with the second drive.

3 drives, the 2 3tb disks are mirrored in windows as dynamic disks. and the kingston has the MBR which points to the 3tb windows 7 install.

Then I was planning on just using the rest of the SSD as paging file drive.

as for my files, I have two 6tb samsung drives mirrored in windows to store all my data.

Trying to get capacity and redundancy, but the existing install is not allowing it.

Windows 7 pro came with the desktop, I have recovery disks, i do not have a windows install disk.

my Kingston 128gb SSD drive is currently untouched, it only has 10 mb free space, it was a pain getting this far because of that.

I am open to suggestions.
This whole issue arrises because windows wont allow me to mirror the OS drive, and if I convert it to GPT, it wont boot and its a pain recopying the kingston drive.

unless someone knows if my desktop supports raid, then I would gladly put the drives as raid mirror and raid mirror and forget about the unused 700GB on the two 3tb drives.

suggestions?

Gator · 25 Nov 2014

Im not sure why 128gb is not enough for only windows. You have to be adding more programs because windows itself should be rather small. Maybe you installed on top of another installation and you have a big windows.old folder lingering around?

As far as mirroring drives and raid, I'll let some of the others comment on that. Just my 2 cents.

JRockZ · 25 Nov 2014

I myself do not know about GPT or Mirroring ect,,, but what I always do is install windows on the sdd drive then add my other drives later as slave drives I guess,, then whatever else from there. you can d/l an Iso of your windows version (untouched) from HeiDoc and make yourself a DVD or USB install disk. Im sure there are many more experienced users here that can help you but this may give you a head start.
Good luck!

RoasterMen · 26 Nov 2014

128GB is pretty much enough unless you are going to put some heavy programs in it.

ignatzatsonic · 26 Nov 2014

GHOSTOWLGRID said:

The SSD drive is too small, windows 7 (despite me putting nothing but the OS on this drive) is a pig and ate all the free space. It is the OS, not me, I tried everyhting to no success.

suggestions?

Windows 7 occupies about 20 GB by itself.

Tell us all the details about this "everyhting" you tried.

I've got Windows 7, fully updated, and over 50 applications on an SSD. Occupied space: 35 GB.

I'd use dynamic disks only at gunpoint. Or if I enjoyed complications.

I'd be skeptical of RAID unless you have an unusual situation or are a slave to benchmarking. Or enjoy complications.

GHOSTOWLGRID · 26 Nov 2014

I have every program I ever installed on my secondary drive from the start.

It was preinstalled win7 x64 from factory.
All I did was upgrade to windows 7 x64 pro from home premium.

I put nothing on the SSD. not even the paging file.
Windows update is up to date, only downloads and installed when I click install updates.

Visual studios is on the secondary drive.

I have went through the user folder and verified all temp folders and any possible temp storage is empty.

I've got this thing down to the bone.

not to mention there are 25 GB of mysterisouly filled space.

Either way, I want to try and install windows onto a GPT disk, or at least a 3tb drive which is all of 3 tb, not limited to 2 tb.

I can raid the drives with hardware and reinstall the OS with the link provided from a helpful user.
But my main goal is getting my existing install to work on a GPT disk.

A full reinstall would take a month minimum.

AddRAM · 26 Nov 2014

Unplug all the hard drives.... then

Delete all the partitions down to un allocated space on the ssd, then let the installer make the partitions, it will be perfect when it`s done. Post back the results of how much space is now taken up. Do not add any programs yet.

When done post a full shot of disk management.

3 things that take up space.

1 Page File
2 System Restore
2 Windows Hyberfile