Windows 10: Did clean install of Win 10 on SSD - Want to put Win 7 on hard drive

I plugged in my SSD and started the computer. Windows 10 is C: and there is a drive D: but it does not have Windows 7 on it. What happened to it? The only other drive I have in Computer Management is F: CD/DVD

 

You have both the Windows 10 SSD and the Windows 7 HDD connected at the same time, right? Your disk management shows a 1TB HDD connected. Is that just a storage drive you have connected (because with the single partition on it, that is what it looks like). Do you also have a good power lead connected to the Windows 7 HDD? Are both the power lead and SATA cable solidly attached to the hard drive and the SATA cable to the motherboard?

 

Yes, they both are connected. I moved all the files I had on the HDD to an external hard drive and then formatted it, which took an hour, before installing Windows 7 on it.

I reinstalled Windows 7 on it again and after it installed it checked the disk and deleted some files and has been recovering orphaned files for over 10 minutes now, and still running, something I have never seen. before. What does this mean?

 

Sounds like something didn't go right. When you installed Windows 7, did you click on the custom install option, which should have given you a list off all the partitions on the hard drive. Then click on each partition listed and click delete. You would have been left with 1 big unallocated space. Then select the unallocated space and click next to let Windows setup create the partitions it wants and install Windows. Doing this with the SSD disconnected.

 

Yes, I clicked Custom Install, but didn't really pay attention to the hard drive for partitions because there wasn't any on it to start with. I am pretty sure it was all unallocated space. I did all this with the SSD disconnected from the motherboard. It is still recovering orphaned files. Can I turn my computer off and run chkdsk on the hard drive and then format it again and reinstall Windows 7?

It stopped & I plugged the SSD back in & attached what is on Drive D

 

When dual booting, Windows 10 fast startup should be turned off - sometimes this causes problems when booting into Windows 7:
Fast Startup - Turn On or Off in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

If it were my computer, I would turn off Windows 10 fast startup. Shut down. Disconnect the SSD. Reinstall Windows 7 to the HDD, this time make sure to delete all the partitions on the hard drive and install to the unallocated space. Then reconnect the SSD as first SATA, HDD as second SATA. Then do the BCD boot command after booting into Windows 10.

For one thing - when doing a clean install to a completely unallocated drive, there should be more than 1 partition created on it and it looked like you only had 1 partition on the hard drive.

I would do that just to make sure there weren't any problems lurking that would become major problems later. Obviously something went wrong with the first attempt.

 

Thanks a million for all the fast help. I am going to do exactly as you recommended and if all goes well, I will marked this SOLVED! Fingers crossed!!

 

FINALLY! Windows 7 is on D: and Windows 10 is on C: Now, how do I change my User accounts to D: drive in order to save space on the SSD? I am assuming these User files will be separate from the ones in Windows 7.