New Build - 4 drives - disk management confusion

soozD · 01 Aug 2018

Built a new system with 4 drives as can be seen in screenshot below. Loaded Windows 10 to my 970 EVO SSD "C" drive. 2 WD HHD drives are good. Am confused as to what happened to my 860 EVO SSD drive. I took the assigned letter, E, which is fine - but it shows the rest of the drive as unallocated. If I try to allocate, it wants to assign "H" as the drive letter. Don't want anything on this drive since I need it to be a "scratch" drive for video and photo edits - don't know what's in the section that it named "E", since it does say "system...." In the end, I want this whole drive to be called "E" without any "sections". How do I make this happen without screwing anything up?

New Build - 4 drives - disk management confusion-disc-management-printscreen.jpg

Samuria · 01 Aug 2018

Welcome to the forums. That drive has the partition you boot from it shouldn't have a drive letter. You can set the unallocated to a primary partition and set what ever letter you want. You installed Windows with more than one drive on the system and that drive is drive 0 which is normally the boot drive. You now need the two drives to boot up

dalchina · 01 Aug 2018

If you've just installed Win 10, what you could do is simply have only the drive on which you want Win 10 installed connected, and do a new clean install, deleting all partitions on the target disk.

You also seem to have a MBR installation rather than the more robust GPT/EFI installation. Was that a deliberate choice?

soozD · 01 Aug 2018

I was going by a YouTube video since I really didn't know that much about installing multiple drives and I'd never built a system before. Don't want to boot with 2 drives so am going to take the suggestion to do a clean install -- which means I'll now have to look up how to do that. Thanks for both answers - much appreciated.

Plankton · 01 Aug 2018

I've found over the years.....if you're going to be using more than 1 drive, it's best just to install the 1 drive you want the OS on and do a clean install. Then when all that checks out....you can power down and add the rest of your HDDs.

dalchina · 01 Aug 2018

This should help:
Clean Install Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials

Loads more here:
Windows 10 Tutorial Index | Windows 10 Tutorials

soozD · 01 Aug 2018

….so confused....so many questions I could ask, but the main one is: Could you please tell me the step by step instuctions to get back to a clean drives without anything on them so I can unhook all but the 970 EVO and start over like I had never installed OS? Yes - I see "Clean Install Instructions" all over this forum and the internet, but not seeing anything like I have.

dalchina · 01 Aug 2018

Simply concentrate first on installing Win 10 on the one disk with the others disconnected.

Using the Win 10 installation boot disk:
Considering your system drive: Please follow the tutorial - read through it to

13. If Installing Windows 10 with UEFI

Your motherboard must support UEFI 2.0 or later to be able to install 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 10 with UEFI.
A) Delete all partitions/volumes on the Drive # (ex: Drive 0) that you want to install Windows 10 with UEFI on until that Drive # shows as unallocated space. (see screenshot below)

(I'm assuming you wish to install a GPT/UEFI version - if your PC supports it).

There you will see a screenshot - there is a Delete button. That's what you use to delete the partitions you select, when you reach that stage.

Trying at this stage to give you more instructions is likely to confuse you, I think.

N.B. First check whether you can do a GPT/UEFI install (does your BIOS support it?) else you'll do another MBR (old fashioned) install.

You may prefer to ask a friend to help you.

soozD · 01 Aug 2018

Thanks so much. Yes - my bios does support GPT/UEFI. Will tackle this an a couple of hours.

Samuria · 01 Aug 2018

The port you have the e drive on should be the one you connect the drive you want to boot from as it's disk 0 you can boot from any but drive 0 is best practice