Second Hard Drive - Quick Question

Jon33 · 13 May 2017 at 15:04

Hi

I've updated my PC and it now has a SSD as the main drive, I want to use my old hard drive for storage. It's currently just plugged in via a SATA port and it's working - is that set up correctly or do I need to do anything else to ensure it's working properly long term?

Cheers

ED209 · 13 May 2017 at 15:48

that's all you need to do

.

if you ever re install the OS make sure its disconnected to stop windows storing stuff on it during install.

Jon33 · 13 May 2017 at 17:20

ED209 said:
that's all you need to do .

if you ever re install the OS make sure its disconnected to stop windows storing stuff on it during install.

Perfect cheers

, didn't think it would be that simple!

CaptainCrash · 13 May 2017 at 17:20

One small (or perhaps not so small) detail - if you haven't reformatted the old HDD, perhaps because you wanted to preserve its data, it will have an "orphaned" recycle bin from the previous installation, which you can't get rid of by simply emptying your current recycle bin.

Depending on what was in the old bin it might add up to a fair chunk of capacity, so you might want to go into Explorer > View > Options > Change folder and search options > View > Advanced settings, and uncheck "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)", ignoring the dire warning which will greet you. Then you can manually delete the entire $RECYCLE.BIN directory on the old volume (a new one is automatically created as needed), after which you can re-hide the protected OS files.

If you've formatted the old drive it won't matter as everything will have been blown away in any case.