How do I set my second hard drive as a "data drive"?

[lsquare]

I'm planning to go with a SSD and HDD as my storage solution. The HDD will be used strictly for storing files while the OS and applications will be installed on a Intel 80GB SSD. I have some questions about setting up my Hitachi 2TB SATA hard drive as a so called data drive.

I'll describe my previous experience here and explain why I'm still a bit confused on this matter. Hopefully someone can clarify things for me.

I remember plugging in a hard drive to a computer years back. As soon as I turn on the computer, I go into disk management to initiate and format the hard drive. I'm given the option of either "MBR or GPT". I picked MBR for compatibility reasons, but for the future, I intend to use GPT. Next, nothing appears. So I right clicked on the drive in disk management and select "New Simple Volume". Then set the volume size, assign it a drive letter, format the drive with NTFS, "default" for allocation unit size" and using "new volume" for volume label. Next I did a "quick format" and that was it.

However, when the computer was upgraded to Windows 7 Professional, the data drive wasn't detected. I had to go into disk management and found out that because I didn't give it a volume name, the OS didn't detect it. Windows 7 also forced me to reassign a drive letter to the drive.

So it all boils down to this. How should I setup and format my new 2TB hard drive? I want to be able to unplug the drive from my main computer and put it elsewhere if it's needed. Do you guys usually assign a drive letter and volume name to your "data drive"? Did I setup the drive correctly base on the method that I described earlier? How do you guys setup your drives?

 

[jacc1234]

Normally I assign drive letters to my hard drives. So in your situation I would have C: (SSD) and D(Storage).

2TB is the max size for a MBR partition table so you can format with either GPT or MBR. There are some distinct advantages to GPT partitions so its what I would use unless you plan on moving the drive to older systems.

The final option is that you can mount a drive as a folder instead of it looking like a different drive. For example you could have a folder called "Data" on your C: drive and anything in that folder would actually be stored on you secondary 2TB hard disk.

I hope this clears some things up.

 

[Tbirdkid]

I kind of disagree. The reason why is that you need to know what other systems are setup and their drive letter. When a drive letter is assigned to a hard drive, it stays. You can move it, but you dont want to. This is directly in relation to mapped drives, hard mounted drives, usb drives, etc. if you set it as a drive, get the information from all of the systems that you are going to mount it in, and label it one that isnt being used anywhere.