Would appreciate some advice on reconfiguring my hard drive settings

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t_tangent
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Would appreciate some advice on reconfiguring my hard drive settings

Post by t_tangent »

I would appreciate if anyone can advise me on the best layout for my hard drives, both HDD and SSD.

I have a dual boot setup running Windows 7 32bit and Win 7 64bit. Until now these 2 partitions were on the primary HDD drive, and I also have a second 4TB HDD drive for samples, backups, projects, etc.

Yesterday I installed a Crucial 525GB SSD with the 2 Windows 7 partitions cloned from the older primary HDD. However having seen some other threads on here, in particular one from a few years ago

http://forums.scopeusers.com/viewtopic. ... es#p315043

so I am wondering if this would still be the better option, i.e. to put the original HDD back and run the dual boot OS partitions from that, and then reformat the Crucial SSD and use that for samples and audio library files like Kontakt, etc.

I do also have a spare 240GB Kingston SSD drive, so possibly I could use that for the Windows OS partitions, maybe resize the partitions to 100GB for Windows 7 32bit and the remaining 140GB for Win 7 64bit , then reformat and use the larger Crucial SSD for samples

Thanks in advance for any help
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dante
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Re: Would appreciate some advice on reconfiguring my hard drive settings

Post by dante »

I had success with MiniTool partition wizard http://forums.scopeusers.com/viewtopic. ... al#p332225

Best thing about it is I can select boot partition from going into BIOS on startup - without having to wait for a partition manager
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t_tangent
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Re: Would appreciate some advice on reconfiguring my hard drive settings

Post by t_tangent »

Hi Dante, thanks for your reply. Yes it was actually your post and setup that led me to use Partition Wizard as well. At first I used Macrium Reflect but then I needed to resize the 64bit partition and couldnt figure out how to do that with Reflect, so I used Partition Wizard to do that. I have used an earlier version of Minitool before and its a decent util.

I also have a similar setup to yours in that I too run both Scope PCI cards and XITE on one PC. I wanted to keep the 32 bit OS so I can use scope samplers and some other software that doesnt work so well in 64 bit, but have now set Win 7 64 bit as my default boot up.

When you say you can select boot partition from going into BIOS on startup, I dont really understand how that works. Is that something that you set from Partition Wizard Minitool, or is that specific to your motherboard BIOS?

Also, on your diagram you have Kingston SSD as both the Windows 8 boot partition and also as the DAW Work partition. Are those 2 seperate SSDs or just 1 SSD which has been partitioned into two?

Just out of interest, what size are your Boot partitions and the Work partition?

On my system I could split the Crucial 525GB SSD into 2 partitions, 1 for Windows 7 32bit Boot partition, and the other for the DAW work partition, and then use my spare Kingston 240GB drive for Windows 7 64bit. Then finally use the 4TB WD Black HDD for larger libraries and backups, etc.

Finally, do you keep the paging file for each OS on the same partition as the OS is on, or did you move that elsewhere, or did you disable the paging file?

Thanks again for your help. :)

EDIT: I think I undestand what you mean now with the boot from BIOS. If I am right, you go into the bios and select which SSD to boot from and then if at a later time you want to use the other you just boot up into bios again and set that as the boot disk. That might be worth looking into. Is there any real advantage over using the Windows Boot Manager. I have WBM set to a 5 second countdown and then it boots into Win 7 64bit by default. Takes about 10 seconds to start up. Scope doesnt automatically start, but I am sure I could set that up if I really wanted to, although just running that manually is not a problem.
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valis
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Re: Would appreciate some advice on reconfiguring my hard drive settings

Post by valis »

Many EFI motherboards will have an EFI boot selector hotkey, just like the BIOS hotkey. On my SuperMicro based systems, this is F11, but these are server/workstation boards. Some may not have this feature in the consumer sector, but I do know at least a few motherboard makers have exposed this functionality in the past...
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t_tangent
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Re: Would appreciate some advice on reconfiguring my hard drive settings

Post by t_tangent »

Thanks for the clarification Valis. I will have a look at my mobo manual and see if this is implemented on the Gigabyte. No biggie if not though
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dante
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Re: Would appreciate some advice on reconfiguring my hard drive settings

Post by dante »

t_tangent wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2018 4:01 pm Hi Dante, thanks for your reply. Yes it was actually your post and setup that led me to use Partition Wizard as well. At first I used Macrium Reflect but then I needed to resize the 64bit partition and couldnt figure out how to do that with Reflect, so I used Partition Wizard to do that. I have used an earlier version of Minitool before and its a decent util.

I also have a similar setup to yours in that I too run both Scope PCI cards and XITE on one PC. I wanted to keep the 32 bit OS so I can use scope samplers and some other software that doesnt work so well in 64 bit, but have now set Win 7 64 bit as my default boot up.

When you say you can select boot partition from going into BIOS on startup, I dont really understand how that works. Is that something that you set from Partition Wizard Minitool, or is that specific to your motherboard BIOS?

Also, on your diagram you have Kingston SSD as both the Windows 8 boot partition and also as the DAW Work partition. Are those 2 seperate SSDs or just 1 SSD which has been partitioned into two?

Just out of interest, what size are your Boot partitions and the Work partition?
EDIT: I think I undestand what you mean now with the boot from BIOS. If I am right, you go into the bios and select which SSD to boot from and then if at a later time you want to use the other you just boot up into bios again and set that as the boot disk. That might be worth looking into. Is there any real advantage over using the Windows Boot Manager. I have WBM set to a 5 second countdown and then it boots into Win 7 64bit by default. Takes about 10 seconds to start up. Scope doesnt automatically start, but I am sure I could set that up if I really wanted to, although just running that manually is not a problem.
t_tangent, see screenshot below of BIOS, the boot partitions and the sizes. They are separate SSD - 120GB and 240GB
bios boot
bios boot
IMG_1468.JPG (143.39 KiB) Viewed 2123 times
Last edited by dante on Sun Mar 04, 2018 6:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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dante
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Re: Would appreciate some advice on reconfiguring my hard drive settings

Post by dante »

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t_tangent
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Re: Would appreciate some advice on reconfiguring my hard drive settings

Post by t_tangent »

Thanks for the picture Dante. Unfortunately for me it seems my bios doesn't have this feature, so just using windows boot manager. Will also get another ssd for sample libraries etc, as it has made a big difference already having the OS on SSD.

Thanks again.
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