General Question(s) About Hard Drives.

[05ls7gto]

So my puny little 200gb hard drive that I had from way back in the day is starting to run low on space... I only have 37gb of memory left, which is a lot - but I want a fail safe. I am going to use this opportunity as an excuse to pick up two 1TB WD Caviar Blacks.

As of right now I don't have the time to reformat my computer because of school so for now I am going to use these are secondary storage drives until winter break where I have the time to format... I never really dealt with adding in additional hard drives so bear with me as I have these questions.

1) When I get the two new drives, do I just hook up my SATA/power wires, boot up my computer, then just format them via My Computer?

2) When I get the time to reformat I want to use one of the Caviar Blacks as my primary drive. So can I just put all of my files (music, pictures, documents, etc) on the other caviar black and format my other two drives to clear them?

I'd like to elaborate on question number two by saying exactly what I want to do...

I would take all of my files and put them on one caviar black as storage. Then I would go to install windows and reformat the other caviar black to be my main drive with windows on it. Once windows is installed I would format my 200gb drive that currently has windows and everything on it to clear it and keep it as a storage drive. The other caviar black would just stay untouched with all of my files saved on it. Would this plan of action work?

 

[zigzag3143]

So my puny little 200gb hard drive that I had from way back in the day is starting to run low on space... I only have 37gb of memory left, which is a lot - but I want a fail safe. I am going to use this opportunity as an excuse to pick up two 1TB WD Caviar Blacks.

As of right now I don't have the time to reformat my computer because of school so for now I am going to use these are secondary storage drives until winter break where I have the time to format... I never really dealt with adding in additional hard drives so bear with me as I have these questions.

1) When I get the two new drives, do I just hook up my SATA/power wires, boot up my computer, then just format them via My Computer?

2) When I get the time to reformat I want to use one of the Caviar Blacks as my primary drive. So can I just put all of my files (music, pictures, documents, etc) on the other caviar black and format my other two drives to clear them?

I'd like to elaborate on question number two by saying exactly what I want to do...

I would take all of my files and put them on one caviar black as storage. Then I would go to install windows and reformat the other caviar black to be my main drive with windows on it. Once windows is installed I would format my 200gb drive that currently has windows and everything on it to clear it and keep it as a storage drive. The other caviar black would just stay untouched with all of my files saved on it. Would this plan of action work?

Yes, Yes, and Yes.

Let us know when you are ready to do it and we will walk you through it


Ken

 

[Orbital Shark]

1) When I get the two new drives, do I just hook up my SATA/power wires, boot up my computer, then just format them via My Computer? Yes you do

2) When I get the time to reformat I want to use one of the Caviar Blacks as my primary drive. So can I just put all of my files (music, pictures, documents, etc) on the other caviar black and format my other two drives to clear them? When installing Windows 7 you can choose a destination HD, this becomes the default boot drive

I'd like to elaborate on question number two by saying exactly what I want to do...

I would take all of my files and put them on one caviar black as storage. Then I would go to install windows and reformat the other caviar black to be my main drive with windows on it. Once windows is installed I would format my 200gb drive that currently has windows and everything on it to clear it and keep it as a storage drive. The other caviar black would just stay untouched with all of my files saved on it. Would this plan of action work?

When you re-install Windows 7, so long as you know which drive is which then you can still keep full control of your files. You can put all of you rata files onto 1 drive then install Windows 7 then once done you can link your files/folders using the library in Windows 7.

If i've misread what you said then please let me know


OS

 

[05ls7gto]

Yes, Yes, and Yes.

Let us know when you are ready to do it and we will walk you through it


Ken

When you re-install Windows 7, so long as you know which drive is which then you can still keep full control of your files. You can put all of you rata files onto 1 drive then install Windows 7 then once done you can link your files/folders using the library in Windows 7.

If i've misread what you said then please let me know


OS

Thanks guys, exactly what I wanted to hear! Glad to hear that my plan for reformatting will work too.

+rep for both of you.

P.S. I already know the steps for setting up the new drives, but just wanted to make sure I didn't miss something.

 

[Orbital Shark]

Glad to help )

Let us know how you get on.

 

[gregrocker]

Just while you're installing Windows to the one new HD, unplug the other ones.

This is because if somehow the other HD gets marked Active and is in a prior drive slot, Win7 will look for the first Active partition to place the System MBR. This is how many data drives have the OS MBR accidentally installed upon them.

 

[05ls7gto]

Just while you're installing Windows to the one new HD, unplug the other ones.

This is because if somehow the other HD gets marked Active and is in a prior drive slot, Win7 will look for the first Active partition to place the System MBR. This is how many data drives have the OS MBR accidentally installed upon them.

Yep, I had planned for that actually. I am just going to leave the 1 Caviar Black that will be my primary drive plugged in, and leave the other two drives unplugged until everything is all setup.

 

[DocBrown]

Why not make an image of the entire 200gb HD to the 3rd 1tb drive. Then restore the image as your complete system to the 2nd virgin 1tb HD. Then you can wipe the 200gb HD & use it as you want & then same with the 3rd 1tb.

 

[05ls7gto]

Why not make an image of the entire 200gb HD to the 3rd 1tb drive. Then restore the image as your complete system to the 2nd virgin 1tb HD. Then you can wipe the 200gb HD & use it as you want & then same with the 3rd 1tb.

Though that is a good plan it wouldn't work for me. One thing is I like to do a reformat once in a while, plus I want to have my programs/OS on a separate drive then all my data. So I will have 1 of the 1TB drives with the OS and programs, then the other 1TB with files, and the 200GB I'll use for whatever.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

   Note

Contrary to popular belief, formatting does not remove any data at all, it just checks for sector errors and marks the space to be over-written as needed, all the data is still there including all the code from previous/failed installation attempts.

​

Hello 05ls7gto.



The only real way to remove data is to over-write it and a format will not do that at all, for an out-line of the wipe "secure erase" process have a look at this tutorial at the link below.

SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

 

[gregrocker]

You can move your User folders to the data drive using this method: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18629-user-folders-change-default-location.html

Or you can simply link storage folders on your data drive to the relevant Library by rightclicking on them.

If you use the former method, it will move your User files all to the Data drive for you, so you'll only have your OS/Programs as desired and could then consider cloning to the new drive, or applying a backed up image.