So, your revised plan is to place your Win 7 on the newer 1 TB unit, and use the 4 TB unit as a second data-only drive. That will work fine, and you will NOT need UEFI support in your BIOS since you will use a 1 TB drive Partitioned in the MBR style to boot from.
However, you do have two issues to address, as follows:
1. When you install Win 7 on the 1 TB unit, I recommend that it should be the ONLY hard drive in your system at that time. In other words, disconnect any other HDD while you do the Install. This alters a default Windows process designed to help you in future in the unlikely event that some of your OS's files are corrupted. It does not eliminate this process, only alters where the backup OS files are located. The problem it will prevent is that the "normal" process places the backups on the OTHER drive and from then on you MUST have that "other" drive installed, or it cannot boot up.
2. Merely Formatting the existing Partition on the 4 TB unit will NOT solve your problem. Doing that would wipe clean the 2 TB space you have, but still leave you with only half of your 4 TB unit available for use! AFTER you have installed Win 7 on the 1 TB unit, shut down and reconnect your 4 TB drive. Now, you say you are reluctant to go into GPT Partitioning, but you will need to do that. The ONLY way that you can use ALL of the space on a HDD over 2 TB is to use the GPT Partitioning system. In the Partition Table structure of the older MBR system, the maximum address on the HDD for data works out to just over 2 TB using any normal Allocation Unit size, and this is one of the major improvements in the GPT system - it allows HDD's a LOT larger than this - in fact, larger than any HDD now or in the near future. And this does not apply only to the size of each Partition on the HDD, it applies to the whole HDD.
Your 4 TB unit has a Partition on it already, but only 2 TB because that is ALL you could possibly get using the MBR system. It contains Win 7 (which you are re-doing on the 1 TB unit) that you don't need, and maybe some data or files you do want to save. So, once the 4 TB unit is reconnected, first thing is to check whether it contains anything you want to save, and copy it to the 1 TB unit. Once you're sure you don't need anything else on the 4 TB unit, you need to get rid of all it has and start up a new Partition system. You may have some difficulty here. First, go into Disk Management and find that 4 TB unit that has one or more Partitions on it, plus some Unallocated Space. For each existing Partition, RIGHT-click on it and Delete it, until the entire HDD is Unallocated Space. This is where you might have trouble, because some versions of Windows will not try to make such drastic destructive changes to any HDD that contains a copy of Windows, even if it is not your boot drive. So, if Disk Management refuses to do those jobs for you, give up on that and we'll find another tool to do the job for you.
The easiest thing probably is to go to the website of the manufacturer of your 4 TB drive. From there you can download their hard disk diagnostic software, but it will only work on a HDD from that maker. So, if your 4 TB unit is from WD, get their Data Lifeguard; if it's from Seagate, get their Seatools. In either case, the "for Windows" version should be good for you because your Windows IS working and you can use this diagnostic software as a Windows app to work on your 4 TB drive. (There are "for DOS" versions of these tools that I prefer because you can use them when your computer has NO HDD working, but you do not need that.) Run that software and be VERY sure at the beginning that it is set to work on your 4 TB drive only. What you do next will destroy ALL data on the drive, so you don't want to work on the wrong one!! Have it Delete any and all existing Partitions on the 4 TB unit until it is all Unallocated Space, then back out.
Now that you have all Unallocated Space on your 4 TB unit (however you go there), go back into Disk Management and RIGHT-click on that space on that drive. Choose to Create a New Simple Volume, and you will have some options to choose before the job is done. Choose to use the GPT system, then choose your Partition size - probably all of the space available - for this Primary Partition. It does not need to be Bootable since you boot only from your 1 TB unit. For the Formatting part, choose the NTFS File System, and probably a Quick Format. Quick Format is fairly fast because it does NOT attempt to clear out old data or write anything everywhere. But if you want to be thorough and have lots of patience and spare time, let it do the default Full Format. This process writes zeros to the entire disk and tests it all, so it takes MANY hours. When your options are set, let it do the job and wait until it's finished. When it is, back out of Disk Management and reboot the machine. That 4 TB unit should show up in My Computer ready to use with its full capacity available.
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