Setting up SSD as boot drive and 6 Tb HDD as storage drive?

[naufalrey]

I have 128 gb SSD that i use as boot drive for my windows 8, i intended to use 6 tb HDD as storage but disk management only detects 2tb of HDD. I realize that its MBR disk and it needs to be converted to GPT in order to utilize more than 2tb of hdd but windows wont let me do that because the 6tb HDD containing current boot, system, page file, crashdump or hybernation volume . What should i do? am i stuck with 2tb forever?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, naufalrey.

So if you have Windows installed on the SSD and you have some of the OS partitions (such as system or boot) this means that you probably had the 6TB drive connected to the motherboard during the Windows installation process. This is not an uncommon issue. Unfortunately the best thing you can do in this case is to make a fresh install of Windows on your SSD with all other drives disconnected from the motherboard during the installation process. Once you make sure that you can boot to Windows properly with just the SSD connected to the mobo, you can go ahead and connect the 6TB drive. After that I'd suggest that you backup all important data which you might have on it and reformat it by using GPT, so that you can take advantage of the drive's full capacity.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[naufalrey]

Hey there, naufalrey.

So if you have Windows installed on the SSD and you have some of the OS partitions (such as system or boot) this means that you probably had the 6TB drive connected to the motherboard during the Windows installation process. This is not an uncommon issue. Unfortunately the best thing you can do in this case is to make a fresh install of Windows on your SSD with all other drives disconnected from the motherboard during the installation process. Once you make sure that you can boot to Windows properly with just the SSD connected to the mobo, you can go ahead and connect the 6TB drive. After that I'd suggest that you backup all important data which you might have on it and reformat it by using GPT, so that you can take advantage of the drive's full capacity.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

thank you very much!!! that did it, now my cpu is utilising its full capacity.

 

[naufalrey]

Hey there, naufalrey.

So if you have Windows installed on the SSD and you have some of the OS partitions (such as system or boot) this means that you probably had the 6TB drive connected to the motherboard during the Windows installation process. This is not an uncommon issue. Unfortunately the best thing you can do in this case is to make a fresh install of Windows on your SSD with all other drives disconnected from the motherboard during the installation process. Once you make sure that you can boot to Windows properly with just the SSD connected to the mobo, you can go ahead and connect the 6TB drive. After that I'd suggest that you backup all important data which you might have on it and reformat it by using GPT, so that you can take advantage of the drive's full capacity.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

i have another question though, some programs and games automatically create folder in "my documents" which is located in C which is also my SSD. As you know i dont have that much space on my SSD, and if my programs keep doing that my SSD is eventually going to run out of spaces. Any idea on how to handle this?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

I'm glad that everything worked fine. As for your question, it's true that a lot of games and programs create folder in the User Folder, but more often than not they don't fill them up with large size files. They are either account info files, settings files, save game files, etc. You might get a suggestion on how to move your User Folder, but that's not really recommended since you we're talking about Win 8 here. You can read more about it here: http://www.zdnet.com/article/dont-move-your-windows-user-profiles-folder-to-another-drive/.

On the other hand if a program creates a destination folder of ready files (which are large) like video editing projects or recording programs, you should be able to set the path of the destination folder to a different drive from the settings.

Also you could check out the suggestions from this link for new SSD users: https://www.maketecheasier.com/12-things-you-must-do-when-running-a-solid-state-drive-in-windows-7/. If you don't understand something or you have questions, just go ahead.