Slow 2nd Hdd

[Sheep500]

Hi guys. Looking for some help.
I recently built a pc for a mate:

I7 3770k cpu
Asus p8z77 v lx
Crucial M500 120gb ssd drive
Sapphire R9 290 gpu

I tested it with my ram and put windows 8.1on and it ran great. He was to put his old hdd, dvd drive and ram in when he received it.
He has said that it automatically boots to the ssd and win 8.1. The old hdd is visible in bios and if he clicks to boot from it , it starts to boot windows 7 but then stops and boots from ssd. When he gets into windows 8.1 he can see the second older hdd but he says its running cripplingly slow.

Is this a setting? Does the old hdd need to be set as a secondary drive or something? I thought dual boot would have been straight forward.
He is 200 miles away and is only at the end of a phone.
Any help and suggestions much appreciated.

 

[Trimax]

You shouldn't have two HDD's in your system with operating systems on both of them. You only need the operating system on the SSD and then the HDD can be used as a storage device.

So you need to format the HDD and only use the SSD to boot and run the operating system.

 

[noise]

Could you clarify the statement 'he says its running cripplingly slow'. Does he mean the PC overall or just when accessing files on the old HDD?

 

[Sheep500]

Thanks for the response. I will put that to him. What about dual boot - is that not recommended?

 

[Sheep500]

The cripplingly slow is reffering to accessing the old hdd.
He has win 7 on it with all his programs on it for his 3d course he is studying for.

 

[Trimax]

Thanks for the response. I will put that to him. What about dual boot - is that not recommended?

I wouldn't recommend having a dual boot as It's not even needed and also will just slow down his hole system!

 

[Sheep500]

Ok. His dilemma is that he has alot of programmes on the old hdd that are registered. Hes not sure if he has to deactivate them ,format hdd and use it as storage (like you said) and then reinstall all of them and activate them again.

 

[noise]

The dual booting situation adds a bit of complexity to the situation but there is nothing wrong with it as such.

Because each storage device has been setup independently, you have two bootloaders which are not aware of each other. Therefore selecting the boot device via the UEFI/BIOS is only way you can select which drive to boot from. This has no real impact on the issues you are experiencing it is more of an annoyance.

The problem your friend is more likey to encounter is that the Win7 install on the old HDD will be activated against another motherboard. Depending on the license type of Win7 that is installed, it may not be possible continue using that OS installation. Again, this has no impact on the speed issue.

Could I ask, did you set the UEFI/BIOS to AHCI mode?

 

[Sheep500]

Hi noise. Yes it was set to AHCI mode.
He did say that the old hdd wouldn't boot when he tried it via the bios - said it loaded up win7 splash screen then restarted and booted to ssd.
Ive recommended to him about backing up, formatting hdd then using it as storage.

All feedback much appreciated.

 

[noise]

Regarding the registered programs (and in light of the Win7 activation I mentioned), I would suggest temporarily disconnecting the SSD drive, booting solely from the old HDD, get the programs deactivated etc. I would then ask him to check the PC performance with only the SSD connected just to ensure there isn't an overall problem.

 

[Sheep500]

I tested the pc with just the ssd and it was lightening quick - so much so it convinced me to buy and ssd.....which I did recently.

 

[noise]

Hmmm without the details of the old HDD (e.g. model number) it may be hard to diagnose further but I'd agree that wiping the old drive once the data is secure is probably the next step.

 

[Sheep500]

Thank you very much both of you. I'll let him know.
I will be in same situation today when ssd arrives.
Blank old hdd and use as storage

Ps I have no idea what his hdd is as he installed it.