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    Help with second Hard drive

    Discussion in 'Sager and Clevo' started by EuphemiaOfFlorida, May 12, 2011.

  1. EuphemiaOfFlorida

    EuphemiaOfFlorida Newbie

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    Hello, My Sager came today and I'm at a lost of what to do. My intention was to get a laptop with two hard drives in order to use one for backup. I bought the Sager NP8170-S1. I also had it configured with a 80GB SSD (primary) and a 500 HD to use as the backup for files etc.

    I'm now having a mental block, I guess from being tired but I can't figure out what I need to do. My plan was to put games on the SSD and to use the 500GB HHD for work. I wanted to put Virtual PC on the 500 GB HD and then add other virtual machines such as linux, etc. Is there a way I can do this without going into the bios each time to change boot order and do I need to put Windows 7 on the 500 GB HD as well? I have installed it on the SSD already. Thank you in advance for your time. :SLEEP:
     
    EuphemiaOfFlorida, May 12, 2011
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  2. Lithus

    Lithus NBR Janitor

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    Virtual machines run from inside Windows, that's the whole point of a virtual machine - to trick the OS into thinking that it has hardware to itself while in reality it's running inside some other OS. If you changed the boot order and booted straight into Linux, then it wouldn't be a virtual copy.

    Installing Windows to the SSD is the right thing to do. If you installed it to the HDD, you would have two independent copies of Windows.
     
    Lithus, May 13, 2011
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  3. EuphemiaOfFlorida

    EuphemiaOfFlorida Newbie

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    Thank you so very much for the quick reply, however, as I understand about the virtual machines and Windows 7 being on the SSD, I'm not sure how to make the other drive show up so I can access it to put files there without shutting down and changing the boot order. Could you please tell me how to go about this? I know there has to be a way. I'm not sure if I'm being clear and I do apologize just fuzzy brain right now. I want it to be like my desktop, when I 'attach' the external HDD I can see the letter of that drive and access it. Isn't there a way to do this for my SSD to 'see' that HDD? Thank you in advance for being so kind.
     
    EuphemiaOfFlorida, May 13, 2011
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  4. Lithus

    Lithus NBR Janitor

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    Oh, you just need to format it. Type "Disk Management" into the Start Menu and click on the top choice, you should see your second HDD there with a bunch of unformatted space. Just right click and format the drive.
     
    Lithus, May 13, 2011
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  5. EuphemiaOfFlorida

    EuphemiaOfFlorida Newbie

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    Thank you again so very much! I will do that now. I thought I'd not get it working and finished before tomorrow! Thanks for being so helpful.

    Update: Worked like a charm!
     
    EuphemiaOfFlorida, May 13, 2011
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