Custom Built Computer Boot Drive vs Storage Drive

[cub1982]

I recently had a computer custom built at a repair store. A couple of weeks back my start menu stopped working because of a Windows 10 update. I decided to wipe everything and reinstall Windows. I have done this many times in the past on other computers with no problem. This time it was quite a headache. I have 2 hard drives. I first removed the data from both drives, then assumed Windows should be installed on the smaller drive. After installing there I realized I had no access to the larger drive anymore. So I started over and installed instead on the larger drive. After doing this I finally admitted that I had no idea what I was doing. I brought it back to the repair store and asked them to make it the way it was when I bought it. They did so with no questions asked, but I'm worried about it happening again. The main issue is I have no idea how the two drives are configured. If I need to reinstall Windows again, how can I set this up correctly?

These are the two drives I have:

Boot Drive: Samsung 850 EVO 120GB SSD
Storage Drive: Seagate Barracuda 1TB HDD

Thank you!

 

[RealBeast]

How about posting a screen shot of your disk management window showing the two drives?

And yes, you want your OS installed on the SSD.

 

[cub1982]

Here you go--

http://postimg.org/image/qw2f5kcsl/

 

[Saga Lout]

Both those drives are being misread - one by double and the other by about sixfold.

 

[cub1982]

Both those drives are being misread - one by double and the other by about sixfold.

How do you mean? I was startled when I saw the configuration as it looks like drive(disk) 0 isn't doing anything. Is that correct?

 

[RealBeast]

I assume that you also have a 2TB external HDD also?

The OS appears to be on the 1TB HDD, and I would bet that they set up your SSD as a 64GB cache using Intel RST and then just ignored the rest of the SSD (hence the unallocated 48GB).

That is a very poor way to use an SSD, but don't worry since you have the install disk it can be fixed and everything will then be good.

What you really want is the OS completely installed to the SSD, and then the 1TB HDD to be used for storage.

edit: here is the math that I use to come up with that: A 120GB SSD gives you about 93% of the "marketed" 120GB, so about 111.6 minus the 64GB cache, and that would leave 47.6GB (since the 93% is approximate, that accounts for the unused space that you see as unallocated space on the SSD). And disk management won't show you the space that is used by the Intel cache -- the 64GB.

 

[cub1982]

I assume that you also have a 2TB external HDD also?

The OS appears to be on the 1TB HDD, and I would bet that they set up your SSD as a 64GB cache using Intel RST and then just ignored the rest of the SSD (hence the unallocated 48GB).

That is a very poor way to use an SSD, but don't worry since you have the install disk it can be fixed and everything will then be good.

What you really want is the OS completely installed to the SSD, and then the 1TB HDD to be used for storage.

edit: here is the math that I use to come up with that: A 120GB SSD gives you about 93% of the "marketed" 120GB, so about 111.6 minus the 64GB cache, and that would leave 47.6GB (since the 93% is approximate, that accounts for the unused space that you see as unallocated space on the SSD). And disk management won't show you the space that is used by the Intel cache -- the 64GB.

Thank you RealBeast. That seems to explain things. One more related question. How would I install the OS to the SSD and then get the HDD to show up. I tried that when all of this happened. When I installed to the SSD, I only then saw one drive, the SSD on my desktop. The HDD was not visible. Would I need to change something in the BIOS settings or something? Is there somewhere I can find the steps to configure that way?

 

[RealBeast]

You will have to do a couple of things. First disconnect the HDD, and work on your installation with only the SSD attached.

Then before starting the install process change your motherboard SATA bios mode to AHCI from RAID. Next startup from your installation disk and select custom install, then as a first step delete all partitions that exist on the SSD and install to the single remaining unpartitioned space.

After the OS install, attach the HDD, go to disk management and delete all partitions on the HDD, then create a single simple NTFS volume, and then format the volume.

If you run into problems cleaning the drives at any point, you can always use a command prompt and simply type in diskpart commands, like

diskpart
list disk
select disk when n is your desired disk
clean

that will clean the entire disk of all partitions and formatting. Diskpart is very useful, and HERE is a good syntax guide. Just be sure to have any data backed up though as diskpart can pretty much do anything, and mistakes are not forgiven -- data can be lost.

While all of this will take time and effort, you will better understand your system and it will work much better than just using half of your SSD as a cache.