Installing Win7 on a 3TB drive

[spdfreak]

I'm building a couple NVR's for vid surveillance using 2 3TB WD purple drives and I want to install windows on the first drive on a small 50GB partition and then create 2 1.5TB partitions for the cameras to write to. I've read the tutorials about booting off the install disc using EUFI/GPT and letting windows install normally to one large partition (size of disc). I've not seen a tutorial where they use multiple partitions when installing. Will it matter if I make partitions before installing or should I just let it make one large partition and then resize it later? Lots of stories about failed installs on >2TB drives so I want to do it right the first time.

 

[ctk1981]

No experience in doing this, but if I were to tackle it I would enable UEFI in the bios, boot into the windows 7 install and just do the partitioning there.

 

[spdfreak]

This worked well... you do have to specifically pick the EUFI cd/dvd device in the boot order or it will default to legacy and not do the GPT partitioning. I'm going to try cloning this disc to another 3TB drive for the next machine so I don't have to load windows manually. I'll let you know if the Acronis software handles it OK.

 

[AMD64Blondie]

Western Digital Purple? Never heard of that one.

What is it?

 

[ctk1981]

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1210

"Surveillance storage" drives.

 

[spdfreak]

I used the WD Acronis software and it cloned the 3TB disc to another 3TB with no problem. Stuck the cloned disc in a new system build and it booted right up...