Hardware in question:
Primary HDD: 1TB Seagate Barracuda ST31000528AS (7200RPM)
Secondary HDD: 3TB Western Digital WD Green WD30EZRX
I've been spending the last month attempting to build my first gaming PC. I'm finally at a place where the PC turns on and wants me to install Windows. So I've decided to take the secondary hard drive from my old PC (3TB) and make it my primary (and only) hard drive in my new PC, which I was told by many many PC enthusiasts that I would be able to do no problem.
The problem is: Windows 8.1 says the hard drive is not compatible, and must be formatted to NTFS. So I re-hooked the hard drive up to my old PC and attempted to convert it. But it turns out it's already formatted to NTFS! So if it's already properly formatted, why does Windows 8.1 say it's not the correct format? Do I need to erase everything on the hard drive and start from scratch? Because that is exactly what I was hoping to avoid!
One thing I noticed is that there is in fact a partition: one is 2TB, and the other is 740-or-so GB. But I don't know how to check if the partitions are formatted differently, if say the 2TB portion is NTFS and that's what I'm seeing, and maybe the rest of it is a different format. If there's a way to find out, I'd like to know.
An alternative to all this would be to use the primary hard drive of my old PC (1TB) and simply UPGRADE to Windows 8.1. But to do that, it wants me to restore that hard drive to "Factory Defaults", which means I lose everything on it. But since the secondary hard drive works off the primary, what will happen to it if I restore the primary to factory defaults and then install Windows 8.1 onto it? Will the 3TB hard drive no longer be compatible with it? Will I have a 3TB hard drive loaded with files than I can no longer access?
I'd appreciate any help with this.
Also, if anyone thinks an EXTERNAL hard drive is a good idea for a situation like this, I wouldn't mind if someone recommended a good 4 or 5TB one.
Thanks!
Primary HDD: 1TB Seagate Barracuda ST31000528AS (7200RPM)
Secondary HDD: 3TB Western Digital WD Green WD30EZRX
I've been spending the last month attempting to build my first gaming PC. I'm finally at a place where the PC turns on and wants me to install Windows. So I've decided to take the secondary hard drive from my old PC (3TB) and make it my primary (and only) hard drive in my new PC, which I was told by many many PC enthusiasts that I would be able to do no problem.
The problem is: Windows 8.1 says the hard drive is not compatible, and must be formatted to NTFS. So I re-hooked the hard drive up to my old PC and attempted to convert it. But it turns out it's already formatted to NTFS! So if it's already properly formatted, why does Windows 8.1 say it's not the correct format? Do I need to erase everything on the hard drive and start from scratch? Because that is exactly what I was hoping to avoid!
One thing I noticed is that there is in fact a partition: one is 2TB, and the other is 740-or-so GB. But I don't know how to check if the partitions are formatted differently, if say the 2TB portion is NTFS and that's what I'm seeing, and maybe the rest of it is a different format. If there's a way to find out, I'd like to know.
An alternative to all this would be to use the primary hard drive of my old PC (1TB) and simply UPGRADE to Windows 8.1. But to do that, it wants me to restore that hard drive to "Factory Defaults", which means I lose everything on it. But since the secondary hard drive works off the primary, what will happen to it if I restore the primary to factory defaults and then install Windows 8.1 onto it? Will the 3TB hard drive no longer be compatible with it? Will I have a 3TB hard drive loaded with files than I can no longer access?
I'd appreciate any help with this.
Also, if anyone thinks an EXTERNAL hard drive is a good idea for a situation like this, I wouldn't mind if someone recommended a good 4 or 5TB one.
Thanks!