2 Hard drives

[AlmightyPear]

Hey,

I have 2 hard drive as of the moment, the main one that i am using is a 1TB SSHD. I have Windows 8.1 64Bit installed. I also have a secondary 320GB Western Digital Caviar Blue HDD. This one was extracted from my old computer and has Windows 7 32Bit installed. I want to format my old one and use the 320GB space for recordings with Fraps (You know their ridiculous file sizes). So if I install the hard drive will my system have trouble booting up? I'm not entirely sure what would happen and I don't know how to format it without making a mistake, thanks

 

[Diced]

I would try connecting the additional Hard drive and selecting your 1TB disk manually as the start up device.
Once you're in Windows, you can format the 320GB disk in diskmgmt.

That said, I did the exact same thing just a week ago (adding an additional drive with windows installed) and had no issues whatsoever - it booted into my "main installation" and I was able to format the other drive.

 

[AlmightyPear]

I would try connecting the additional Hard drive and selecting your 1TB disk manually as the start up device.
Once you're in Windows, you can format the 320GB disk in diskmgmt.

That said, I did the exact same thing just a week ago (adding an additional drive with windows installed) and had no issues whatsoever - it booted into my "main installation" and I was able to format the other drive.

Alrighty, thanks for the reply. The old HDD may have some trace of viruses or something i am not sure. Would this affect my new 1TB HDD? (Not 100% if it contains viruses but the PC was really unprotected)

 

[Diced]

Alrighty, thanks for the reply. The old HDD may have some trace of viruses or something i am not sure. Would this affect my new 1TB HDD? (Not 100% if it contains viruses but the PC was really unprotected)

Good question, theoretically, if there would be something on the old HDD, it could jump over to your main drive and infest it. If you want to format it without going into Windows, you could start from a Windows CD and format it that way (or you could just use something like partition wizard or ultimate boot cd)

 

[AlmightyPear]

Alrighty, thanks for the reply. The old HDD may have some trace of viruses or something i am not sure. Would this affect my new 1TB HDD? (Not 100% if it contains viruses but the PC was really unprotected)

Good question, theoretically, if there would be something on the old HDD, it could jump over to your main drive and infest it. If you want to format it without going into Windows, you could start from a Windows CD and format it that way (or you could just use something like partition wizard or ultimate boot cd)

Ok, how would I go though the process? Like I can boot up with the HDD installed and windows 7 will load up, do I just do a regular format. I want the drive completely wiped clean for so I can just drag and drop files on it, like an external hard drive, is that possible, thanks

 

[Diced]

Exactly, you could just wipe the hard drive and then use it as a secondary drive where you can drag and drop files onto or use it as storage for music / movies etc.

I recommend doing that with the disk management tool, see here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/309000