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 Post Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 7:42 pm 
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Patty's thread, viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1030 ,made me think drives. I have been procrastinating about getting a backup drive for my media. I have around 2.25GB of videos on a 4TB external drive with no backup. I could replace all the videos if needed but would take about one hour less than forever. Currently the drive holds rips from my 431 DVDs. It would take weeks to replace if not months.

My solution is this drive, http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... SD-4000AS2. I would NEVER buy this drive as a system drive as it is only 5900 RPM. While it is SATA 3 it is a slow drive as the standard desktop drive speed is 7200 RPM. In human speed not much of a difference. In computer speed it takes a lot longer to get to the needed info. Still, for my purpose, it seems a good choice.

I DOES only get 4.5 stars out of 5 on reviews but all I see as a negative is the 5900 RPM. For me the whole purpose of the drive is to hold movies. Compared to the read speeds of an actual DVD it is vastly faster. For $124.42 including shipping it looks to be a great data storage remedy for me.

I will still not have a "TRUE" backup of my movies but I WILL have a working clone. My Blu-Ray player in the bedroom has a USB input. I have already proven that I can connect the current external to the player and it has no issues playing everything that I have.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 8:52 pm 
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:cry: Grumble... grumble... ARG! The drive is on back order.

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 Post Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2015 7:33 pm 
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Since buying this drive to 'sort of' back up my DVD archives while still having the backup useable I started thinking... I REALLY need to stop doing that 'thinking thing' as something usually blows up... :mrgreen:

As all regulars here know I 'archive' all my MANY DVDs to an external drive which is perfectly legal under U.S.A. Copyright laws.

I have never before zipped a archived DVD that I recall... For grins I tried it on an old 3.9GB DVD archive and the compressed result was a zipped file with a size of ~1.39GB. This is a size reduction ratio of just over 2.8. Well not exactly as I only ripped the main title but the extra features and such are not a major factor as to size.

It would take quite some time to finish but I could backup my entire library in compressed format on a 1-1.5TB drive with room to spare.

It will take forever but I think that I will try an experiment. My media drive shows 2.24TB used with 1.39TB free. At the compression ratio of ~2.8 the free space should be plenty.

If this ends up with numbers that I expect this could totally change my media backup strategy. I have a 2TB external sitting here doing nothing. At this ratio I could backup a 5TB drive to that 2TB drive with much room to spare.

Considering that I am 'zipping' ~2.24GB with both the source and destination being the same USB 3 external drive, this could take a day or so to complete. However, from the initial zip build, I can just use 'add to archive' to keep current.

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 Post Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 7:19 pm 
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Hate it when I play dumb... ;) The ZIP file failed. Win 7 issues with a 4+TB drive. Attempting again on my laptop booted to Win 8.1.

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 Post Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 11:04 pm 
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Sigh, still a failure. In both cases it has come up with a write failure saying that the disk might be full. On the bright side I think I MAY know the reason...

I have just been trying to use the Windows send to compressed file routine. Sadly this routine does not allow the option to select an output drive. I THINK this would indicate that, while there is room on the drive for the archive, the 'temp' file is also being put to the same drive. If I am correct the combination of the two takes too much space.

Sigh, now to find a third party package that will allow the needed options. I have always felt that WinZip is over rated. 7-zip just baffles me. I shall find what I shall find. ;)

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 Post Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2015 6:33 am 
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Why are you zipping to begin with? Just copy the data over -- space is cheap. :-)

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 Post Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2015 10:30 am 
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LOL! Because I'm playing. ;) When the back ordered drive comes in there will be a straight copy.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2015 2:38 am 
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OK, found out why the archive is failing, not enough disk space just like Windows said. ;)

It wasn't a temp file issue but rather it seems that VOB files within a DVD are different as to how much they will compress between one DVD and another. I found what looks to be a nice free zip utility that allowed me to designate a drive other than the source for the destination of the zip file. At least this zip utility checks needed and available space before starting to write, saved a lot of time. ;)

Experiment is over but not really a failure. I learned something in that not all DVDs are consistent as to how much the VOB files can be compressed. I also acquired a nice looking zip utility that will handle several compression formats.

As to the zip utility it is Express ZIP from NCH Software at:
http://www.nchsoftware.com/
They offer a LOT of software. Since I just found them I can't say a lot as to quality but am a bit impressed with the interface of the zip utility. Actually I'm impressed enough that I downloaded their burning software to try. I have a Blu-ray burner and really am not sure if anything I have will burn a Blu-ray, theirs will and, again, it is free.

LOL! You know that I must be a bit impressed as you will very rarely see me praise or promote a download site here. It is early so I could be wrong but I think this site deserves a look.

One thing does concern me in that when the program group is created a lot of their software is listed but actually, looking through the list, I might just like it. The list is within a folder in the 'all programs' section of the start menu so really takes no space. The list is an install on demand list by category. NCH offers a LOT or varied software packages from video and audio editors to an FTP client to business software including invoicing. Of course as I just found them I don't know how much of the software has free versions.

Another nice touch is that they offer discounts on the paid versions if you install the free. Does not last long but when I installed the zip utility I was presented with the option of buying not just the paid version of the zip utility but any of their software for half price. This half price offer is only good for four hours from the time of the free version install but seems like a nice touch. If all is as it seems I think that I will return to this site often.

On a slight downside they do have bundled software but they do it correctly. The fact that there is bundled software is fully disclosed on their download page and you must opt in for any of the extra software. If you just click through none of the bundled software is installed. I have zero problems with this. They are giving you something for free why should they not be able to offer something else via the install. As long as the default is to NOT install I have no issue with this.

@ Pete and Acadia... After the two installs I have run a full scan with MBAM Pro as I figure malware would be most likely. I also ran a quick scan with Security Essentials. Both still showed my system as totally clean. You both run a LOT more security than I. Either or both of you feel like testing this site?

Final note is that I stopped myself from being stupid. As this thread started with my trying to zip 2.24TB of data it made me think about selecting to compress the drive under the drive properties options. I selected to do so and applied. About three seconds later I canceled. Until I have a viable mirrored drive going compressed is not a thing to do. :mrgreen:

I will say that this compression stuff for my media drive is not over. I won't do it until I have the back ordered hard drive but I intend to see what happens if I select to allow compression of the drive under properties. Of course I would not want to do that until I have a backup. Now I have to decide what I want to watch tonight and throw it to my 2TB external and allow compression. Hey, initial test to see if the video still plays through without issue.

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 Post Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2015 9:35 pm 
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YEA!!! The new drive finally shipped and should be here Tuesday, 6/30.

I think that I may really play with compressing the drive via the properties options. LOL! Before I get yelled at here are my reasons...

1) Neither the 4TB external nor the 4TB internal are system drives. There is zero software installed, they are strictly ripped DVDs.
2) Except when adding a new DVD rip the drives are not written to, only read. This means much less added CPU usage compared to a compressed drive that is often being used to write.
3) Yes, drives are not all that expensive but they are not free. From spending some time doing random samples I have found that I could effectively turn the 4TB drives in to 6TB drives. Taking a look the best price I saw in Tiger Direct for a 6TB drive was about $230.00. I spent $124.00 on the 4TB drive that is in shipping. Yes, storage is not expensive but why pay $230.00 when I can do the same for $124.00?
4) Before I was able to buy a new drive just about any time I wanted I ran a system drive compressed. It was the only way that I could have on the system what I needed. While this is irrelevant in this case I thought I'd mention. The NTF compression does not include system files (the OS) in the compression. I never had an issue. Even when I finally got a larger drive I just cloned, didn't need to have the new drive compressed or anything.
5) Since the drives will hold nothing but ripped DVDs it is not redundant. Using drive compression with video files that are already compressed such as MKV or MP4 does nothing and can, in some cases, actually result in more disk usage. This is NOT the case as everything on the drive except for the Excel spread sheet that I use as a menu is ripped DVDs.

While I would not recommend for everybody I see zero downside, in my specific case, in compressing these media drives.

Has anyone used this and actually had issues?

OH! One more 'downside'. How long do you figure it will take to compress a drive that holds ~2.25TB? :wacko2:

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 2:43 am 
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OK, so the drive showed up and was useless. I tried in Win 7, 8.1 and 10 to fix the partition issues but they all failed. I was always stuck with a workable 2TB partition with a 1.63TB partition that I could do nothing with. It would show in Drive Management but I could do absolutely nothing with it. I was seriously thinking about returning it as defective but remembered a gem of a program called EaseUS Partition Master. While there are paid versions most will never need more than the free.
http://www.easeus.com/download/epmf-download.html

The issue is that the drive was set up for the MBR (Master Boot Record)system. Sadly MBR cannot handle anything over 2TB on a drive even if it is partitioned. The absolute max on a drive using MBR is 2TB. This is why the drive showed as a 2TB partition that I could work with and a 1.63TB partition that I could do nothing with. The reason that the partitions are 2TB and 1.63TB is that a 4TB drive really isn't. It is a 3.63TB drive by true definition.

Most large drives, over 2TB, come set up to avoid this issue but some do not so how do we fix this? We use the aforementioned software gem as in EaseUS Partition Master.

So it has been shown that a drive set up for MBR cannot in any possible way be larger than 2TB. A larger drive cannot even be partitioned to avoid the issue. With MBR the physical max size of a drive is 2TB. The answer is GPT (GUID Partition Table).

While I wasted a lot of time trying other things EaseUS Partition Master took ~ 30-60 seconds to translate the drive from MBR to GPT. Currently the mirror of my 2.24GB video library is in progress. The new drive will end up being internal on my media system but I seem to have forgotten to order a SATA data cable to connect the thing. I'm doing the clone via a USB 3 dock. It is showing a time of about 20 hours to finish but we all know how accurate Windows times are... :mrgreen: It will take as long as it does. I'm sure that it will take less time than it will for the SATA cable to arrive... I hope............

As strange as it may sound I'm REALLY happy that I ran into this issue as I learned something. I have always thought MBR and had zero clue that it was obsolete being replaced with GPT. To be totally honest I had never even heard of GPT.

Sigh, it would seem that I wasted a LOT of time over a slow drive that was not initially set up for today's standards. From my view point I see a couple of factors.

1) I now have a working 4TB drive for only $124.00 including shipping.
a. Once I compress the drive I'm guessing it will equate to a 6-6.5TB drive.
2) More important is that I learned something.
a. Before I searched my issue with this drive I had never even heard of GPT. I'm not going to say that I understand it all but, at least, I now know that it is there...
3) I also now know how to fix a drive that is too large for MBR.

Was the situation frustrating? Of course it was! Was what I learned worth the frustration? Absolutely! In a weird sort of way I'm kind of happy that this all happened.

The next chapter of this story will be the drive compression. While I could have set up the new drive to be compressed before starting the mirror I decided to not. Just to avoid possible conflicts I don't want to mount a drive internally that has already been compressed.

It MAY seem convoluted but I really think that I'm doing this in the safest way. Obviously I have a solid drive with 2.24TB of video being cloned to another 4TB drive. Once I test and prove the clone I will use the drive properties option to compress the drive. I am guessing that this will make the drives each equal to about 6-6.5TB.

Sigh... Probably nobody is interested in any of this but I'm thrilled that I learned what I learned. :mrgreen: I consider it a good day if I learned something or caused someone to smile. Today was a GREAT ay as I did both. :mrgreen:

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 6:09 am 
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Of course we're interested and with you experimenting it now gives you the knowledge to be able to help others who may come across the same problem.

Well done you and your persistence in solving it. ;-)

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 Post Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 7:39 pm 
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Thanks Joan. :)

The next phase is in progress. While I am not going to compress the new drive until the SATA cables show up I am in the process of compressing the drive that will remain external.

LOL! I am at about 2 days of compressing the drive and it looks to be a little over half done. :shock:

It can take as long as it wants as I'm doing it on my laptop. It is just churning away bothering no one. ;) If I had sat back and thought a bit it would probably be a lot further in to the compression. I also did the clone from the old drive to the new on the laptop. Since the laptop only has one USB3 port I put the new drive in a 3.0 dock and connected to that one port with the old external connected to a USB2 port. I didn't think to switch the external being compressed to the USB3 port. No big deal, just taking longer.

I don't think I'm going to gain as much space as I initially thought but still will 'add' lot of space. DVD's are weird! As the compression continues I check the properties of a title now and then. One may have less then 1% difference another no difference at all, then another may be 50+% smaller 'on disk' versus the actual data size.

Over all I'm happy and having fun. :mrgreen:

On the down side I may end up scrapping it all and starting over. I had not taken my external in to my bedroom to connect to my Blu-ray player since I was still using a 2TB drive. The player would not see the 4TB drive. With the 2TB drive it would play anything without issue. It is quite possible that the Blu-ray player can only use the MBR system. It is also possible that the player just does not like my dock. When the compression is done on the external I will try it on the player. I expect that it will fail but have to try as the experiment would not be complete without.

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 Post Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2015 9:22 am 
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I ran into the same problem when I purchased a few 3 TB drives. After doing some research I discovered the MBR vs. GPT formatting. Since discovering this I haven't had any issues with my Seagate HDDs. One thing I will pass on that I was referred to by a past member (sorry I don't remember his name) who has since left us is a program called GParted-Gnome Partition Editor. I have been using this for years to format and partition my new drives or cleaning up a used drive. It works great and it's a free program. You can get it here: GParted

Basically you download the ISO file and create a bootable disk that you run when you boot your machine if you need to create a new system drive otherwise I believe you can run it anytime to partition or resize a partition on an extra HHD when needed. I must admit I have never tried this so I don't know for certain.

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 Post Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2015 10:21 pm 
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Thanks Terry but the drive issues are already resolved using EaseUS Partition Master. Still, thanks for bringing up Gpart as I had totally forgotten about it. I now have a boot disk for GPart again. Actually I thought that it might help with another thread I have going about a busted external drive but it failed. Regardless of all that, thanks again! GPart is a really good utility that I had forgotten.

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 Post Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2015 10:44 pm 
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No problem Jay. I was late to the party with my comment. I just tried to save you a couple bucks. I have always had success with Gparted. That said now members have a couple options for partitioning HDDs. :tup3:

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 Post Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2015 7:17 pm 
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@ Terry: I still appreciate you posting GParted Terry, it is a very good utility that I had forgotten. I just wish that they would make a Windows version that could be ran from desktop. Mayhaps they do and I just did not see. The boot CD version actually is ran under Linux. This in itself almost makes me want to split this thread and move the GParted portion to advanced but I don't think that is needed as you can't tell the difference in the interface from anything Windows.

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 Post Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2015 8:15 pm 
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OK, here we go! :mrgreen:

Sometimes the timing of things works out. ;) The SATA cables I ordered that I forgot when I bought the drive are slated to show up tomorrow. It just so happens that I am off work tomorrow and the next... I have time to play! :rofl2:

I was a bit disappointed in the results when I compressed one of the 4TB media drives. I only gained about 250GB of space. That is not trivial but not what I expected from random tests. I was looking for a low end of a TB but was I thinking right? It is actually better than that as that number does not encompass the entire drive. On the entire drive, if the compression stays constant, I'll gain about 425GB. That equates to 75-80 more DVD backups. I consider that enough of a gain to stay with the program.

I AM going to change things. The drive that is already compressed is proven and works like a champ. I am going to wipe the new drive and partition to two equal partitions. I will set up both partitions to be compressed. Then I will MOVE enough files to the second partition so that the rest will fit on the first. Then I will move the rest to the first partition.

I will go against wise drive management in this case as I will only leave only about 5% free space on the first partition. In most cases this is a bad idea as defrag and other functions will not work but the drive will never need to be defragged as it is just a media source. The read speed on a hard drive is just so much faster that the original DVD/Blu-ray that it just does not matter.

Since I will be pulling the media system tower out of its slot to add the internal drive it will stay out of its slot until everything is done. I will mount both 4TB drives via internal connections to make all the file transfers faster.

Once everything is done and proven I will probably leave the original 7200 RPM 4TB drive as the internal and mount the new 5900 RPM 4TB in the enclosure. What the heck... If the enclosure is being connected via USB3 it really does not matter that it is 5900 RPM.

So why am I bothering to partition and go through all this? My Windows OS of choice for media is Windows 7. While Windows 7 can read from a 4TB drive it cannot fully access the drive. Even with a motherboard patch the most that Windows 7 can fully handle is 3TB. I am not going to go into details as to why this is but it seems that 3TB is the max. It worries me to use a drive that will be mostly used in Win 7 that Win 7 cannot fully control.

We shall see what we shall see but it seems like my current projects have gotten me a bit more interested again. There are a few members still here that can vouch for the fact that it used to be that I would deliberately 'waste' my system after making an image to match an issue that a user was experiencing. I'm not saying that the projects I'm doing are going to bring me back to that point but they MAY bring me a bit closer. For a long time I sort of burned out, I'm starting to find myself having interest again....... That could be good or bad, we shall see... :mrgreen:

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 09, 2015 4:16 pm 
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You should probably only read any of this if really interested in how I'm setting this up. This is not really something that most would find of interest unless they are dealing with LARGE amounts of media. As much as anything it is log for myself.

SATA cables arrived and the new drive is mounted and setup internally. I didn't get fancy with figuring the sizes just made the first partition 2000000MB which equates to 1.9TB. The second partition ended up being 1.73TB. That combination matches the 3.63 total size so all is cool. I did change my mind and use the new 5900 RPM drive as the internal instead of the 7200 RPM drive in the enclosure. I figure that the speed difference between a 5900 RPM and 7200 RPM drive really means nothing as to the internal and having the 7200 RPM drive in the USB3 enclosure might save a minute or three on cloning the drives.

I did go ahead and compress the drive. With the external on USB3 going to the internal, without compression, the copy would have taken around 6 hours. Compressing as it goes I don't really know how long it will take. The size on disk of the first batch being copied is 1.74TB. I will then copy smaller groups to come closer than I should to the 1.9TB partition size. I won't be able to defrag but don't really see where that is an issue in this case. Drive performance will also suffer but, again, in this case I do not see an issue. If an issue does arise I'll just move some items to the second partition.

LOL! Now to decide if I'm going to put my audio on the media drive or leave on the data partition of my main drive... If I do relocate the audio it will be to the second partition. Really I probably should as it IS a media drive and audio is media. :mrgreen:

As an aside... Talk about terrible battery life... I just had to change batteries in my wireless keyboard. Good thing that I use rechargeable batteries as they only lasted about 2.3 years. I think that I should complain to Logitech! Of course I'm kidding. :lol: Actually I find the battery life quite impressive as I never turn off the keyboard. The mouse I do turn off.

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 Post Posted: Thu Jul 09, 2015 4:43 pm 
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Since this is not something most users would probably do and it does deal a bit with partitioning I moved the tread to advanced... obviously. :mrgreen:

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 Post Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2015 7:21 pm 
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Basically done, the internal drive is finished and the copy back to the external is underway. Since the external is USB3, not eSATA, this copy will probably take a couple of days.

It was a bit weird setting up the external as it was a single partition. I THINK that I was able to set up the internal completely with EaseUS Partition Master. I just converted the drive from MBR to GPT and set up the partitions. I then went to the properties of each partition and turned off indexing and on compression. When I did this with the external there was only the option to index under properties, not compress. I then went to drive management and deleted the partitions and re-created allowing compression and the option was then available under properties. I MAY have just missed the compression allowance when using EaseUS to set up the external... who knows, bottom line is it all works.

Now that they are partitioned to 1.9TB and 1.73TB both drives are now fully functional in Win 7. After all that was the main purpose of all this, along with having a backup of course...

While normally I would never do this I only left a touch over 31GB free on the first partition. As stated previously I'll never be able to defrag with that little free but can't see why I'd ever need to defrag. Since the files were all moved together without any deletions everything is already sequential and there is no reason for it to not stay that way.

I'm sure that the drive performance will take a hit with the small amount of free space but doubt that it will make a difference that can be seen. If it does, say movies stutter, I'll just move a few more to the second partition. Seriously I do not expect any issues as I watched a movie without issue from the internal while file copies were still going on from the external to the internal.

I still DO have a related task left to do. Currently the second partition holds 29 videos. I use an Excel spreadsheet as a menu, click a title and it plays. I will have to re-do the links in Excel for these 29 titles as the old links are no longer valid, no big deal as the titles are listed alphabetically so I won't have to hunt for the titles to adjust.

LOL! Of course, with me, one solution always brings another problem. Since the drives are now fully useable with Win 7 I will have to rethink my strategy as to multiple boots. It is definite that my laptop will keep Win 7 with the Win 8.1 side replaced with 10. The Win 10 side of my media system will be removed. My original plan was to replace Win 10 on the media system with 8.1 so I had an OS on the system that could fully manipulate the 4TB drives. Since Win 7 can now do that I don't NEED 8.1 on the system but will probably still do just to have all three OSs available. Since I have a 1TB drive in the laptop I could just go with 7 on the media system and triple boot with 7, 8.1 and 10 on the laptop but really don't think I want to go in that direction. Besides, even if not necessary, I tend to prefer to dual boot. Unless there is a total drive failure I can boot to the other OS if something happens to one. Since I isolate the different OS partitions it is a slim chance that an infection or such would affect both.

Anyway, even though it was VERY time consuming, I am pleased with the results of this project and even learned a few things. :) Even the time consuming aspect wasn't really much for me as it was mostly taken with copying data back and forth.

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