Question about slave drive with new hard drive

[kashford]

I'm getting a new hard drive today. I have a backup hard drive in my computer that does ahave a letter assigned to it.

With installing the hard drive do I need to reformat the slave hard drive?

I'm basically using it for data storage and has all of my backup files. And pictures.

I don't want to lose this, can I just keep it unplugged during installation of windows? And longer since I currently have windows 10 but I only a Windows 7 disk, so the new drive is gonna get windows 7 I installed today

Im not sure if windows is installed on the slave drive

 

[USAFRet]

You're doing a new OS install on the new drive?
Which OS do you wish to end up with?

And while you do this install, simply disconnect any other drives in the system.

 

[molletts]

Yes, it's safe to just keep the drive unplugged during Windows installation if you're concerned about losing its contents. (It may also be a good idea anyway - if another drive has a Windows installation on it, you can sometimes end up getting funny drive letter assignments with Windows ending up installed on D: or E: or something - I usually unplug all drives except the one I'm installing on to ensure that the new Windows install goes on C

If you would prefer to have Windows 10 on the new drive, you can download an ISO directly from Microsoft here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10ISO

You'll get a cleaner installation by installing directly from Win10 media than by installing Win7 then upgrading (not to mention the install will be quicker!)

 

[Colif]

much less messy to fresh install win 10

 

[kashford]

Yes, it's safe to just keep the drive unplugged during Windows installation if you're concerned about losing its contents. (It may also be a good idea anyway - if another drive has a Windows installation on it, you can sometimes end up getting funny drive letter assignments with Windows ending up installed on D: or E: or something - I usually unplug all drives except the one I'm installing on to ensure that the new Windows install goes on C

If you would prefer to have Windows 10 on the new drive, you can download an ISO directly from Microsoft here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10ISO

You'll get a cleaner installation by installing directly from Win10 media than by installing Win7 then upgrading (not to mention the install will be quicker!)

I am trying to do this currently using my USB drive. But for some reason I can't get my PC to recognize the sandisk cruzer glide. when I plugged it in it said it only had 1gb but it should have 8 and there is nothign on there. Now I can't even click it

 

[molletts]

I am trying to do this currently using my USB drive. But for some reason I can't get my PC to recognize the sandisk cruzer glide. when I plugged it in it said it only had 1gb but it should have 8 and there is nothign on there. Now I can't even click it

How does it appear in Disk Management?

It might be worth deleting any partition(s) that exist on the USB drive then recreating one occupying the whole device and formatting it afresh.