Windows 10: Installing second hard drive without formatting

First of all do not try this unless you are willing to loose all your data PERIOD!. Purchase a 2TB or 4TB external HDD USB 3.0 and back all your stuff up. I have an 8 year old laptop. When it was new Dell site had 14+ drivers for this system available for download. I downloaded all of them and kept them archived on a CD. I was upgrading to a new 2tb internal SSD Hybird HD this week and went to dell. Now my Dell page only provides 2 drivers. I've been building PC's since the stone age 1992.

Your Boot drive is the Active partition, that partition contains the MBR. As soon as you install another HD, windows will mount the drive and labeled it as Primary extended partition.

You can not have two active primary partitions on a single PC unless you are using a Boot manager. Most people will not want to use a boot manager so this is what I did.


Be aware not all external HDD drives are SATA, My Seagate External HDD is in fact a SCSI drive and will not work in a SATA system without a SCSI controller. So buying a cheap external HDD and thinking you can install it into your PC don't always work.


******IF YOU DONT KNOW WHAT YOUR DOING, BE WILLING TO LOOSE DATA AND SOMETIMES HARDWARE!!!! JUST A FRIENDLY WARNING!

THIS WORKED FOR ME IT IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO DO IT...THIS IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.. THEY ARE NOT INTENDED TO INSTRUCT ANYONE TO DO ANYTHING! USE INFORMATION AT YOUR OWN RISK!

1 I backed up all my important data. took 8 hours

2 I created a restore disk using a USB flash drive.

3 uninstalled my primary HDD

4 installed new HDD

5 installed win 10

6 With my backup data copied all files and drivers to the new HDD. took another 8 hours

7 Set up and configured the PC with all drivers and software needed to get all the hardware installed right

8 I removed the NEW HDD from the laptop

9 I installed the original boot drive.

10 I this is correct for my Dell pressed F12 to bring up the boot manager

11 I selected boot from USB port

12 Once in recovery mode, went to command prompt window

13 I used DISKPART to change the active partition to an extended partition.

14 I shut down the laptop

15 I installed the New HDD in slot 0 and the old HDD in slot 1

16 Rebooted the PC and have a new working 2.5" 2TB Hybird SSD HDD, and an old school 2.5" HDD

In real time reality It took me about 16 hours to do it. If you dont have time dont start.

Make sure you can access your backed up files and drivers some how. I like coping them directly to an external hdd. Archiving them on an image dont help you access them when you need them. have fun.

:)

 

Installing second hard drive without formatting

Hi Joel,

Based on the information you've provided, it appears that your 3TB Seagate hard drive is designed to work as an external hard drive, that's why you are being asked to format it when connected and used as an internal.

For best advice on accessing and keeping the data on the hard drive without formatting, we suggest that you get in touch with the manufacturer.

Should you have other Windows concern, feel free to contact us.

Regards.

 

Best way to format second hard drive?

Just out of curiousity, I just did a normal format by right clicking on the drive and selecting format!

I went to install Office whose default installation folder is Program Files (x86) on the C: drive. However, I just created a folder called Program Files on my second drive without the (x86). Will this be a problem?

 

Formatting a second hard drive in windows

Formatting a second hard drive in windows 10. It is a secondary drive does not have any operating system on it, just files. Thanks