Hello Win10 people! My first post here and hope you can guide me.
I decided I would build my own PC, I have all the necessary including an SSD for Win10 Pro and other program files and (I was advised to do this) a 2TB SATA3 HDD for saving files/data etc (basically "My Documents") to.
I have two questions,
1. On installation, should I just wire up the SSD, install Windows, the add in the HDD, or will Windows cope with the two drives being in operation right from scratch?
2. Once I have installed Windows and my main programs, could someone give me step-by-step instructions on how to configure windows to automatically use the HDD (D:\) as storage for all documents / pictures / music etc...
Thank you in advance
During the installation process you'll be asked to select a drive to install the windows on the desired drive. Once windows installation navigated to that drive usually C: (this drive will be your bootable drive and windows will automatically boot onto this drive) , then the rest of your HDDs will be for your storage drive. You can manually name those drives according to your preferences, but if you do not assign a desired letter to a particular drive, then windows installation process will assign a letter by default process. The default assigned letters are C: for your bootable drive on which windows will be installed, D: for the secondary drive, E: usually assigned to DVD rom, F: to third drive if there's any. Assigning letter to the drives manually can be done during the installation process, when prompted to select a drive to install the windows on, but during the installation you must select a clean installation to be taken to the screen with options to select a drive, format the drives, delete drives, assign letters to drives. Even if you do not manually assign a letter to a specific drive no biggie, widows will do that for you. Those letters are just letters do not present anything special but to identify the drive, because without assigning the letter the HDD will remain stealthy.
If you are reformatting the hard drive that already been used, you'll have to delete all the drives from formatting screen and one drive will remain (these drives are in reference to bootable drives not the storage drives) then format that single drive where the windows will be installed. From here the installation process will automatically create 3 - 4 drives for different sectors (system files, hidden files etc) will be installed on those additional drives that created by windows installation process. Those drives are of small partitions, such as 100 MB, 400 MB, 16 MB etc. you should not worry about those extra partitions created by widows. They are part of installation process and cannot be avoided.
During the initial setup process you'll be asked to download updates, do not select this option, but select a clean installation, it will go to the next screen where you'll be prompted to enter the activation key, you can enter it now or later, if your windows was previously activated it will activate it automatically. If not then you'll be asked to enter. Then installation process will take you to the next screen where you can delete partitions, format partitions and create new partitions. I'd suggest if you plan to install one SSD and second HDD, you make sure you install the windows on the SSD, because it's faster and safer. But don't count on formatting the SSD due to it's a memory chip vs conventional HDD. Conventional HDD has mechanical structures and disc itself is a magnetic disc that actually writes data on the disc just like DVD or floppy disk. The SSD is no different than your ordinary secure digital memory card, that does not have any moving parts. Once deleted it's deleted. Even if you format it will take 2-3 seconds to format it. But HDD actually physically writes information on it and the same way deletes them by rewriting zeros on it.
If the HDD are brand new never been installed or used, you still need to reformat the drive to let the windows to recognize the drive.
Additional storage drives also can be managed from windows disc management drive. You can also manage some features of your main bootable drive C: but not whole a lot. You can create additional partitions or delete partitions etc. I hope this will provide an illustration to the process.
Good luck.
