3TB Secondary Drive(no OS, just media files) Help

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kenneth0077

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Apr 15, 2013
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My computer has been experiencing freezes so I was going to reinstall the OS on the primary HDD, but I don't know if I would have to format my 3TB Seagate Barracuda HDD in order to reinstall it to the primary HDD. I use the Barracuda as my media drive and I don't want to reinstall about a 1TB of media again. When these freezes occur, I can move my mouse, but nothing else responds and when the freeze stops, my Barracuda is missing and I have to do a hard boot. I guess i'm asking two questions really, 1) What is causing these freezes? 2) Would I have to format my Barracuda to reinstall it if I were to reinstall the OS on the primary?
 
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mouse24
Ah its really easy, I have a guide on it actually. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/4530-73-change-lock-screen-settings-file-folder-permission

Its the second post. Its for windows 8 but its exactly the same for windows vista/7/

About the special way to install it. I think your thinking of when you first format the drive you have to format it with GPT instead of MBR to see all of the 3tb on one drive. If you wanted to you could partition the drive into multiple using the MBR format and you would have the same space as GPT just in smaller partitions.

For the new partition it won't matter what you set it up as aslong as its below... I think 2.2tb... Not sure on the exact number. But anyways, after that simply pop in your windows disk...
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mouse24

mouse24

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Nov 30, 2010
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No you won't have to reformat if. Even if you wanted to use it as a primary hdd for the OS you could just partition it (essentially cut it into smaller "parts")

As for the freezes, are you using the most up to date drivers for your mobo? What about the bios?
 
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kenneth0077

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Apr 15, 2013
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Nvm, I figured out how to check that. With partitioning, if the OS partition got corrupted for some reason, would it affect my media files that would be in a different partition?
 
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mouse24

mouse24

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Nov 30, 2010
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If the OS got corrupted.. Hmm, how bad of a hypothetical situation is this? If its just a simple install corruption and not something like a horrid virus/worm that starts infecting files then it shouldn't be an issue. The PC essentially sees the one drive as two (software wise of course). So it should work just like having two drives.

In the case the OS partition did get corrupted. (Lets just say a couple files were deleted and you now have to reformat and reinstall the OS) you can just reformat that one partition and the data on the other partition(s) will still be there.
 
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kenneth0077

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Apr 15, 2013
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3TB hard drives are new to me and I know that there's a special way you have to install it, but i'm assuming i'd have to create the partition for the OS first, but I don't know how to do that.
 
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mouse24

mouse24

Splendid
Nov 30, 2010
4,389
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23,960
Ah its really easy, I have a guide on it actually. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/4530-73-change-lock-screen-settings-file-folder-permission

Its the second post. Its for windows 8 but its exactly the same for windows vista/7/

About the special way to install it. I think your thinking of when you first format the drive you have to format it with GPT instead of MBR to see all of the 3tb on one drive. If you wanted to you could partition the drive into multiple using the MBR format and you would have the same space as GPT just in smaller partitions.

For the new partition it won't matter what you set it up as aslong as its below... I think 2.2tb... Not sure on the exact number. But anyways, after that simply pop in your windows disk (remember the drive letter of the new partition) and install it on the new partition. The windows disk will see it as a totally separate drive.
 
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