Do I leave both my SSD and HDD in when formatting for the first time?

gameranew22

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I've just finished building my rig and configuring my BIOS and another poster has suggested that I leave my Crucial 64GB SSD in and attached to the SATA 3_0 array while disconnecting my Western Digital 1TB HDD during formatting in Windows and to move my SATA optical drive from the white M1 array down to the SATA II blue array, but I have gotten an error reading "Reboot System, select proper boot drive". I've read that you should have it ordered that optical drive goes first, then hard drive, then floppy, for example.

Does that sound correct to you guys? Should I leave my HDD out when formatting so I don't mess up either of them and then replug it in afterwards? Won't it be left un-formatted then? I'm a major newb at this, so forgive me if these questions sound silly.
Thanks
 
You don't trust my advice? :(

The reason you don't want both drives connected when installing Windows is that the installer can get confused and install stuff on both drives. You don't want that.

You can easily connect the second drive after the install is done and format the drive from Windows.

See my reply in the original thread for more untrusted advice... :p
 

Max Collodi

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Leaps is correct. When installing the OS, only the intended boot drive should be installed. All additional drives should be installed after the OS installation is successful. (and after the system is powered down of course)
 

gameranew22

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i'm sorry leaps, I didn't mean to come off as untrusting, I just don't know anything about building computers so I wanted to get more than one opinion even though you're a veteran :p Thank you guys so much though, it really helped me out when I did it and now the computer is up and running great thanks to you!