Bit of a noob question regarding Hard Drives and the like.

[No_Remainders]

So, at the moment I have a ~150 GB HDD installed in my desktop, which is running windows 7.

Basically, because it's almost full of music and games and the like, I'm going to install a new one (mostly because I want to install Ubuntu to run as well, but that's beside the point).

Essentially, I was wondering the following:

When I install the second HDD, can I partition part of that for use with the Windows 7 I'm already running on the first HDD?

Any help in the matter would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Valagetti]

My laptop has two 500gb hardrives and I've had no problems, its pretty much like having 1Tb hardrive.

Yes in short you can do what you want considering partitions.

 

[SwishiestB0g]

Well the short answer is yes. Say you get a 320 gig drive, you can partition it 160/160 or 280/40 or whatever you like. I have a 640 partitioned between Vista and 7. (Steam never ran well with 7 for some reason) It's split 380/260 and works quite well.

It's knowing how to do it is the issue AND if you do it wrong it can create very... fun problems haha.

My brother did something and it started to create partitions in a partition that didn't exist. So be careful and look the stuff up on the web if you're still unsure.

 

[WarDialler]

Put the new drive in, windows will go "Oh, some new hardware...and it's a Hard Disk Drive! Would you like to format it? Obviously yes please you would very much like to format it, Windows will say okely dokely and you'll have two Hard Drives, C: and D:

If you want to MERGE the new Hard drive into your existing hard drive to create one huge SUPER partition...well I think you can do that too, it's been an age since I did any research into the matter though, in the day we used to use Partitionmagic for such things but somebody bought the software and buried it, adobe or norton or one of those unscrupilous mega software houses.

Anywho, simple answer is chuck the new HDD in and lets windows do it's thing, create an NTFS partition for windows, leave some left over for your Unbuntu distro and have fun.

Although already having Windows can't see why you'd want Linux. Just for a play around? Linux is so 2005....aah look, I don't have to bow down to the Corporate Microsoft Masters! Check out my beard and thick framed glasses!

 

[Alpha Maeko]

I prefer the Boot Drive + Data Drive approach.

Windows 7 and basic programs (Microsoft Office, Windows Live stuff) installed on the boot drive: A Western Digital 128 GB SSD. All my games (Steam) and all music/video (iTunes) is installed on my data drive: A Western Digital Caviar Black 1 Terabyte HDD.

 

[McMullen]

(Steam never ran well with 7 for some reason)

Hey, is that on 32 bit or 64 bit Windows 7? My newer machine was bluescreening all the time for a while, with accumulating instability between reboots unless I actually unplugged the machine, and I thought it was faulty RAM. However, it has been perfectly stable since I stopped running Steam on it. I'm reinstalling with 32 bit soon (some of my other software doesn't play well with 64 bit either) and am hoping that will fix the Steam problem. If I have to go back to Vista... D:

OT: I once simply plugged the single hard drive of an old XP machine into a Windows 7 machine and was able to access all the old files from it as a secondary HDD, and probably could have booted XP if I'd chosen to. Just had to give myself permissions for the old files. So yeah, even using another PC's unreformatted HDD can work. Just make sure you don't F up the boot drive for Windows in the process. The internet can help you better than I can.

 

[SwishiestB0g]

(Steam never ran well with 7 for some reason)

Hey, is that on 32 bit or 64 bit Windows 7?

Yeah it was 64 bit. It'd either kill my system or would slow it down beyond belief.

Granted my Vista partition is still 64 and it runs GREAT from there so I have no idea. Maybe Steam just hates 7 64 bit...

Anyways, hope it works out and you have the system and set-up you want Remainders!

 

[MrTub]

(Steam never ran well with 7 for some reason)

Hey, is that on 32 bit or 64 bit Windows 7?

Yeah it was 64 bit. It'd either kill my system or would slow it down beyond belief.

Granted my Vista partition is still 64 and it runs GREAT from there so I have no idea. Maybe Steam just hates 7 64 bit...

Anyways, hope it works out and you have the system and set-up you want Remainders!

Hmm... Odd.

Me and pretty much all my friends are using w7 64 bits and non have had problems with steam

OT: For to merge two hdds they need to be the same size and have the same specs (which is called Raid 0) otherwise you can always just plug in another hdd and have C: & D: and so on.

 

[Esotera]

Maybe a better solution would be to invest in an external hard-drive with more capacity for your music, and split your internal hard drive into a partition of Ubuntu & windows?

I did this on my old laptop & it meant I could listen to music in both operating systems without any chance of corrupting the windows partition. Just a suggestion.