Solved Files on secondary hard drive when installing Win 8.

Hi guys,

Sorry about the title, i was unsure how to sum up this post in such few words.

Basically at the moment i am using Windows 7 Home and will be upgrading to Windows 8.1 in about a weeks time. I currently have Windows 7 installed on a 60Gb SSD and i have a secondary 500Gb Seagate Barracuda for other files. What i am wondering is if i clean install Windows 8 onto the SSD only will i still be able to use the 2nd drive in Windows 8? Basically this drive has a fair amount of music / videos etc and i would like to make to make sure i can use these. I would like to do a clean install and not an upgrade btw.

Thanks for your time

1) Backup the SSD first.

2) Before cleaning Windows 8/8.1 remove secondary 500Gb Seagate Barracuda drive.

3) Clean install Windows 8/8.1.

4) When Windows 8./8.1 is working OK, refit the secondary 500Gb Seagate Barracuda drive.

Hi Daniel,

I did something similar to you. I have XP on one harddrive and a fresh install of Win 8 on the other.

I tend to use XP as a back up drive for personal files and Win 8 as the main. From the Win 8 drive, I can easily access photos, spreadsheets (with software installed on both drives) etc that are stored on the XP drive. The same should be the same for videos/music and even if it doesn't then copy and paste the files over to your new drive.

I would think that (as with spreadsheets) the correct software would have to be installed on the new drive for it to run directly from the new drive.

Hope this helps.

Ok thanks for the quick reply guys, it was very helpful!