How to make First drive for OS and Apps, Second Drive for Mass Data...?

[knot8888]

I just bought a Velociraptor HD 150GB, and already have a 600 gig HD for what i want to use as mass data storage.. ie music movies etc. The 600 gig drive already has about 350 gigs worth of stuff and is running xp-32bit. I want to switch to windows 7 so i can use the 64-bit and put it on the 150GB hd. I run heavy programs like adobe master suite, many autodesk programs, Unigraphics, SOlidworks, Matlab, Simulink, and some video and music composition software.

I was wondering can i just install windows 7 on the new hard drive as master drive and then just plug in my old 600GB drive into the slave drive. will the old OS system interfere? Or will i have to back up my files on an external, and the wipe the 600gb drive before i install it with the 150GB drive.

A secondary question.... i just bought 6Gb of triple channel corsair 1600mhz memory. its rated for 8-8-8-24 @ 1.5 v. I had in my system 3 gig tripple channel corsair 1600MHz dominators rated for 8-8-8-24 @1.65 v. Can I use them together for a 9 gig system?

Thanks for the help!


My Current System:
CPU:i-720,
GPU:Nvidia Quattro FX 4600
MOBO: EVGA x-58
MEM:corsair 1x3GB 1600mhz 8-8-8-24 @1.65v
HD:600 gig WD HD 7200,
PS:Corsair750watt
Case:Coolermaster Haf 932

 

[WyomingKnott]

The answer to the first question is: This is a perfectly valid and common way to do things. The presence of the old drive won't keep your new OS from running; it may lead to a few boot issues unless you take precautions as below.

But you will not be able to run apps that are already installed on that larger drive until you re-install them on the new one. It's not really a question of which drive they are on, it's a question of it has to be installed into the running OS instance so that you get registry entries and a few other things.

Your third question depends on who answers it: some of us are very tolerant of mixing, some have had terrible experiences with mixed memory configurations.

======================================================

OK - the considerations I mentioned. At a bare minimum, you should unplug the larger, currently boot drive when installing Windows 7 on the new drive. Otherwise, the new installation will defer to the Master Boot Record (MBR) on the old drive, not install one on the new drive, and the new drive won't be bootable by itself. The BIOS will start the boot process from your old drive, then give you the menu off your old drive, then continue loading the OS from the new drive.

Of course, this will leave you with two bootable drives and the need to make sure that you always boot from the right one. If you put the Win7 drive in on a lower-numbered controller port, odds are that you will never have a problem. If you want to be sure, you have to find a way to remove the MBR from the older drive; I don't know how to do this.

Eventually, when everything is stable and happy and you have backups, you may want to erase / reformat the old OS partition anyway to reclaim the space. Please not that doing this _alone_ will not stop the BIOS from going to this disk to boot; it's the presence of an MBR and, if I'm correct, a partition flagged as "active." Does anyone have a clearer explanation, please?

 

[knot8888]

Thanks WhyomingKnott! Great help. System works great except that i cant get my computer to recognize i have a graphics card. i tried updating from Nvidia and it says i dont have the required hardware. Any suggestions?

 

[Unolocogringo]

If you download the Geforce drivers you will recieve this problem.
You need to download the drivers for the Quadro.
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
Start here in the first dropdown select Quadro and each dropdownput selest the right option to get the correct drivers.

 

[knot8888]

When I do all that... it downloads fine. but when i install the quadro fx4600 driver it first does the system check... and it says "Install cannot continue. This graphics driver could not find compatible graphics hardware." ??? Windows isnt recognizeing it either in the system info.

However When i run xp... it recognizes it just fine.

 

[knot8888]

Best answer selected by knot8888.