Booting From A Secondary Drive (then Back To The Primary)
Mar 12, 2014
I have a question. One related to hard drives, multiple windows os', and BIOS.
I have save data on my old hard drive (disk) that I need to retrieve that is in the Windows7 "My documents recognized by Windows 8.1 (Windows 8.1 is on my new SSD).
I am concerned that my plan to retrieve my data might cause an error in the bootloader if I perform this method
Reboot in Windows 8.1
When the computer gets to the BIOS splash screen, press F11 (boot options)
Select old harddrive (disk drive with Windows 7) to boot into
This will boot in Windows 7 Home Premium which is located on the disk drive
Log in and go into file explorer
retrieve data from documents menu
copy/paste data from Disk Drive to new folder in SSD
Reboot in Windows 7
When the computer gets to the BIOS splash screen, press F11 (boot options)
Select SSD (with Windows 8.1)
Move data to documents folder
(If computer auto reboots from SSD then skip steps 9 and 10)
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Jul 7, 2014
I have a laptop that has an SSD with Win 8.1 + programs, and an HDD for projects. They are both formatted GPT. When I launch Macrium, for some reason my SSD is now GPT 1 and the second drive is now GPT 2. This is confusing because I'm used to imaging the top line of partitions which is usually my OS. Now that the GPT numbers are reversed, I have to be careful when doing my backups. How to change this assignment so that the SSD will be GPT1 again?
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Jun 30, 2014
I have 2 hard drives and 1 is a lot bigger than the main one. I was wondering if I changed them around would my computer run faster and how I would go about doing this, what I mean is make my larger hard drive my default disk C if possible? [URL] ....
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Feb 13, 2013
XBMC (my htpc software) can not write changes to secondary drive as when I turn off Read-Only it automatically turns back on again.
I can give further information but i didn't want to swap you guys with details unless they are needed, but just in case it is a windows 8 machine running as a HTPC and connected to a windows 2012 server domain.
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Mar 22, 2014
I have a secomdary drive with all of my games and it is at 100% usage even though read and write speeds are at 0 each. I will put a few pictures in here.
Gyazo - f49422631f1d8dfa0f8ce8a8221e79ec.png and
Gyazo - 26d80cde419df07ccadf33cccbe5d985.png
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Aug 20, 2013
I have a laptop that i set up with an image that loads Win8X64 UEFI Secure. If this hard drive crashes at all, will i get a chance to hook it up to as an external hard drive to another computer to pull off user files as back up?
I tried to do this scenario before i start deploying uefi secure images for my company but it wouldn't show data. I can see the drive however in devices but it won't give it a drive letter and i can't access it.
Is there a resolution to this problem that i can troubleshoot just in case i run into it in the future.
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May 14, 2014
When I boot to windows 8 I get a blinking cursor in the top left corner for about 1 second, then I get sent to the BIOS. If I boot to my Linux hard drive however everything works fine.
I figured I would just install a fresh copy of windows, but when I boot to the install disk (I tried both 64 and 32 bit), the windows 8 icon shows up and I get the spinning dots for maybe 10 seconds or so then I just get a blank back lit screen. Is it just coincidence that my drive failed at the same time as both disks failed or is there maybe something hardware related?
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Feb 22, 2012
WCP is just around the corner. Today I shrunk my drive and created 25 GB space for the same..But why is it marked as logical drive instead of primary partition?
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Sep 25, 2013
A couple of months ago I built a new system and made the jump to Windows 8.
Everything runs great apart from one thing - my secondary hard drive (which is the old one from my old rig) is having issues, which I am now only using for all my less-important programs, and movies, games and general files.
Whenever I open up the drive in Computer or Explorer, it will lock up the window/freeze for 10-20 seconds before returning to normal, in which I can then use it again. It will work for normally for around 5-10 minutes before the lockup returns.
I have the hard drive split into two partitions. Both do the same thing.
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Nov 6, 2012
OK, long story short. I did a clean install to Windows 8 Pro 64. Because of the System Reserved partition, it showed both Win 7 and Win 8 available and would prompt to do a dual boot. I cleaned it up by following the instructions on the below link.
Dual Boot - Delete a OS - Windows 7 Forums
It now no longer dual boots, and Windows 8 is fine. The only issue remaining is that my primary drive in drive management still has unallocated space. Disk 0 has 351MB Unallocated space, and 465GB of system boot, page file, etc...
In the instructions, it says to "Right click on the partition that contains the OS you want to delete and Delete Volume. Then right click on the deleted volume and Delete Partition. Now you should have "Freespace" where this partition originally was."
Well, I can't do that. When I right-click on the unallocated space, all I can do is: New Simple Volume, Properties. Everything else is greyed out. I also can't extend the other partition, the "extend" option is also greyed out.
I'm now on Win 8... How to put that 351MB onto the main partition?
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Aug 13, 2014
I have a 3-months old Dell laptop, which I need to do a factory reset for, using the recovery partition.
Since I don't have an external hdd available, in order to backup everything I needed (roughly 95 GB), I shrunk my C drive by 100 gig and created a secondary partition, and just moved my files there.
Now, if I remember correctly, unlike windows disc-installation, it will not let me choose which drive to format and install the new OS on, it'll just delete everything and restore it to the state it was in when I first got it.
Since both drives are on the same HDD, will it actually be deleted? (the secondary drive). If yes, what can I do to "tell it" not to touch that drive?
System:
Inspiron 15 3537I5-4200U6GB DDR31TB 5400RPMAMD RADEON(TM) HD 8670M 2GB DDR3
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Jan 2, 2014
Basically at the moment i am using Windows 7 Home and will be upgrading to Windows 8.1 in about a weeks time. I currently have Windows 7 installed on a 60Gb SSD and i have a secondary 500Gb Seagate Barracuda for other files. What i am wondering is if i clean install Windows 8 onto the SSD only will i still be able to use the 2nd drive in Windows 8? Basically this drive has a fair amount of music / videos etc and i would like to make to make sure i can use these. I would like to do a clean install and not an upgrade btw.
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Jul 12, 2014
As I am nearing the limits of my C drive, I have been purging applications and moving them to a secondary D drive. One of the uninstalled apps, Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Pro, opened up space on my drive, but also left about 29 uninstalled programs (and I assume, many unnecessary folders). According to a couple of Google searches, uninstalling these programs, even if done in the correct order, could cause some problems down the line. However, I do want to install this program on my D drive. Would installing visual studio on my d drive cause any problems (as there are 29 programs related to visual studio on the C drive)? I am running windows 8.1 on a Gigabyte p34g.
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May 7, 2013
I have an external hard drive connected to my PC via hard drive dock on USB 3.0 port. Whenever I turn my PC on with the hard drive connected, my PC won't boot up because it is trying to boot up from the external hd where I have an image of both my Win 7 & Win 8 OS. How can I stop my PC from booting up from the external hd?
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Sep 15, 2014
Computer specs, GeForce GTX 760 and i5-4670k CPU. MSI Z97-G45 Gaming Series motherboard. bought this from somebody with no windows installed on it. computer came with no cd's. bought a new copy of windows 8.1. i have the computer hooked up to a 720p hdtv with an hdmi cord. everytime i am hitting enter to boot from the device options it just keeps blinking but it wont boot from device. i think since i am using a tv and not a monitor it may be cutting off some other options on the screen on the bottom that i cant see? or is there something wrong with the computer. i believe the person used the computer before me for about 6 months or so and deleted what ever operating system he had on it before giving it to me. read some stuff about possible uefi bios legacy boot but not sure?
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Sep 15, 2014
After sorting out my problem installing multiple Hard Drives and getting past that I am now faced with another problem, which is that no screen is displayed on start-up to allow selecting other drives to boot from.
I can select other drives to boot from if I boot up into the default drive and select "Change PC Settings" but that is very slow and allows mistakes if one is tired.
I think the reason for the problem is because I installed all the drives on their own separately (took out the other drives) and they are now all installed properly except for this problem.
I only need to boot from the default drive when I need to do something with that particular drive or to boot from "Windows 7 Ultimate" I tried to fix the problem with Drive Freshen (I think its called) but that didn't work.
Is there a way to fix this problem and have the screen that offers to allow booting from another drive added to the default drive, without doing a total re-install?
On a multi boot system it is the first screen to display before booting the OS, and shows all the installed Drives in boxes with their names (labels) on, so that you can choose which Drive to boot from..
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Mar 4, 2013
As Windows to Go is only available for ENTERPRISE versions and booting from a VHD requires there to be an OS already installed on the physical machine I was wondering if we could "Borrow" a trick from Linux.
Is it possible to install a Mini GRUB boot loader on a partition on an external HDD and on a second partition boot a Windows system.
Note here -- I want a RUNNING WINDOWS SYSTEM -- not an install / recovery / "Win PE" type system -- but a full Windows system that will work even if there is NO usable INTERNAL HDD drive in the computer.
Googling shows quite a few ways of either creating an INSTALL disk (HDD) or booting a VHD neither of which are what I want.
Using GRUB and booting an external HDD in theory should work -- and this should "almost replicate" a Windows to Go system.
(I've had an external USB Linux system with VMware player installed -- that method works but the Windows system is quite slow even on an external USB3 drive -- running a Windows system natively should be a lot better).
I've actually got a spare SSD which I want to use for this -- I replace a 128 GB drive with a new Samsung 256 GB drive as I got a great bargain on it -- 99 GBP LESS 20% VAT which I got back at customs at the airport.
I'll use the SATA==>USB3 connector for connecting to the PC.
(Another possibility might be to get the Linux boot loader to load a Windows VHD from the external drive as well -- but I want the Windows system to work even if there is NO INTERNAL HDD in the computer).
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May 23, 2014
I got an old computer, and my sister still is using it, it had XP but since support ended I decided to go for another system, unfortunetly there were no drivers for Vista and up, so I went for a USB boot - Linux Mint Maya 13 installation. The PC ended up being even slower and a friend just recently showed me how to install the drivers for Windows 8. I decided to go with a USB installation but when I restart and boot from the USB to install Windows 8 Pro, it says: Disk Read Error. I tested the USB on my new PC that I use and it did boot, but it won't boot from the old one.
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Nov 16, 2013
I have a Sony vaio VGX-TP20E. I put the win 8 disk into the computer and setup up the startup to boot from optical drive. But it skips it and starts up win 7 like it normally does. How can I install windows 8?
The first time I did that win7 had some kind of virus in it so I went to the recovery partition and restored the computer to factory settings.
So my other question is if I do somehow get it to work, do I have to delete the recovery partition or do I leave it alone. Logically it would only be able to recover for windows 7 right?
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Jul 31, 2014
I am running windows 8 on a dell xps pc. I have 2 large 3tb and 4tb external seagate drives. After a day or so they lose part of the connection. You can see the drive and folders a couple of levels deep but you can't see files. If you unplug and start again everything is there. On other machines it's not a problem. When you try to eject usb hardware it displays that something is accessing the device. So it's not the drive, it's a driver or something else.
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Jan 25, 2014
Not knowing it would cause problems for me later, I setup a home built computer with a symbolic link for the Users folder from my SSD drive (system drive C) to Drive D. When I found I couldn't update to Windows 8.1 I did some research and discovered I should not have used this method for moving the Users folder and I need to move it back first in order to update.
After doing some research, I decided to follow the knowledge base article found at [URL] .... as my guide to move it back to the system drive. I have started this process and I'm part way through but I have encountered a problem that I can't figure out how to solve.
I booted into safe mode with a command prompt and deleted the symbolic link on my C drive. I followed the instructions in the article to use robocopy to copy the Users folder from my D drive to my system drive but it fails because some system files (like ntuser.dat) can't be copied (presumably because they contain the system info for the account I'm logged into so I am locked out).
I'm not really sure how to get around this and I don't think I'd be able to reboot and get into my system right now unless maybe I recreate the symbolic link from the system drive to d:users.
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Sep 8, 2013
I have been experiencing problems trying to back up to external hard drive this week and keep getting an I/O Error with various error messages including 0x8007045D My Hard Drive is "G" and I can see it through my computer no problem and I also have my ITunes library on it and the ITunes music is working fine.
I am getting a message in Action Centre saying my Back Up did not complete successfully and then I have the option of Try to Run Again or change back up settings. If I select Try to Run again windows cannot find the disk or network location and if I change settings "G" does not appear. It seems Back Up has detected an error on my "G" which is preventing it from running the back up.
Also in Disk Management I am prompted to initialise a disc before logical disc manager can access it so I select MBR and I get I/O device error and disk 1/G is unknown/not initialised.I have tried powering the external drive off/on and also disconnecting it from the computer but no difference and at present I cannot save anything to the external hard drive. There is a previous back up already on the hard drive but this is not accessible at present.clearing this error so I can back up again without loosing what is stored on the hard drive in particular my ITunes library.
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May 7, 2013
My SSD (Intel 60GB) was becoming too small to hold my Windows 8 system partition so I found another use for that SSD and went back to HDD. I transferred whole SSD to HDD with Paragon Backup & Recovery 2013 free, and now the system gladly boots from HDD.
But Windows 8 is somehow still thinking that they are running on SSD. For example "Optimize Drives" (Ex Windows Defragmenter) shows "Solid State Drive" as media type and probably because it can't access TRIM functions, it is unable to defragment the drive, so it is yelling that "Optimization is not available":
How do I convince Windows 8 that they are running from HDD again?
I have tried to remove this disk from "Disk Drives" in Device Manager, also I removed/reinstalled everything under "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" and "Storage controllers" without any success.
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Dec 4, 2013
Purchased a new laptop . It has one large C 1T drive . I would like to create 4 primary partitions , one for programs, one for data , another for media , and the rest unallocated.
How to use built in disk manager ? Can I create several partitions at one go?
Is it easier to use a 3rd party partition software?
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Dec 29, 2012
can set primary boot in bios(by for example press f2 when booting) but my question is that is it possible to set primary boot in windows(for example set to boot from USB FLash Drive) and then reset the windows and the windows will boot from USB?
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Nov 8, 2013
I have two keyboards loaded in Windows 8 Pro: US English , and US International. How do I make US International primary? The examples given always list English and Danish for instance, so you can move one up or down. But in my case, I always see one keyboard, even though both are active.
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Mar 16, 2013
I have a second partition that I would like to install windoiws 7 pro on, but am not sure how to go about it, and once I do install it, how do I boot to it?
So, my questions are- How do I install Windows 7 on this second partition how do I boot to it
I know on my mac with boot camp I just hit the alt button and I have the choice of which OS to run.
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Mar 9, 2013
My system was dual booting Windows 8 and Windows 7. I have deleted the Windows 7 option from the msconfig of Windows 8. Now the system boots automatically into Windows 8 with no problems. If I delete/ format the Windows 7 partition through Windows 8, will it cause any problems?
Also, I found that Windows 7 partition is marked as primary, while the Windows 8 is logical. I
Windows 8 is in C Drive (You can see that its logical)
Windows 7 was in E Drive
There is also a 2.50 GB Simple Basic FAT32 partition with status as - Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition) - What is this?
PS: I do have EasyBCD 2.2 and MiniTool Partition Wizard Server Edition Installed. The latter is not able to modify C drive and set it as primary.
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May 8, 2014
I am a brand new Windows 8.1 user as of a couple of days ago. I have recently updated to Windows 8.1 and am enjoying it. I have been adjusting defaults to my liking easily enough. But I am having trouble with one small item in my dual monitor setup.
In the Taskbar and Navigation properties, I have unchecked the setting "Show Start on the display I'm using when I press the Windows logo key". This does what I want in regard to always displaying Start on my primary monitor regardless of which screen I am working on when I click the Windows logo key. But if I try using Win+S to open the Search bar (or one of the other search hotkeys as well) while a window on the secondary monitor is active it opens on the right side of that secondary screen instead. Any other time, the Search bar opens on the primary monitor as expected. Any way to make the Search bar always dock to the right side of my primary monitor as well, but I haven't found how yet.
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Aug 4, 2013
I would like to ask what is OEM, EFI and unallocated partitions?How can i merge unallocated partitions into primary one???Another question is when my alienware restart , I just see my alienware Logo, cant enter to BIOS ??Computer logins smoothly just cant seem to enter BIOS.I will attatch an image of my disk management.
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Mar 18, 2014
I recently sold my Gateway laptop and the Windows 8 software was already installed with purchase. I want to remove my info and myself as the primary user in windows 8 so the new owner can set themselves up. I tried on my own to figure out and was only able to set up a separate "User" for the new owner until we can resolve.
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