Windows 7, VHD files and a large HDD.

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richms

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#151602 30-Aug-2014 11:03

So I have been cleaning up, imaged a whole lot of old HDDs and then DBANd them to biff them out.

Went to mount one of the VHD's off one of the 2 5TB externals I got to hold them and get this.

Any solution to get windows 7 to not be so picky about the drive that the VHD is sitting on? Will I have to dust off an old small HDD to transfer them to temporarily or is there so way I can process the VHD or else mount it via something else to get it to actually work?

Read only is fine.

Richard rich.ms

nathan

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#1118458 30-Aug-2014 11:36

do you have this installed? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982018

nathan

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#1118459 30-Aug-2014 11:37

otherwise I think you'l need Windows 8 to go back to a 512-byte native drive

richms

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#1118462 30-Aug-2014 11:43

nathan: do you have this installed? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982018

Yes, seems that was installed ages ago.

Richard rich.ms

nathan

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#1118467 30-Aug-2014 11:49

move it to a smaller drive

richms

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#1118470 30-Aug-2014 12:09

Any way of knowing if one of these would work for sure?

http://pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p=HDDSEA1129&name=Seagate-2TB-Backup-Plus-2.5-Portable-USB3.0-Extern

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nathan

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#1118479 30-Aug-2014 12:14

I'm pretty sure the new disk layout format only kicks in on the 3+ TB drives

richms

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#1118481 30-Aug-2014 12:20

Ok, will grab a couple and use those for the working copy of the VHD,

Any idea if this is going to be fixed at any stage, or a tool to migrate the vhd to use 4k sectors so that it will work on a now-normal HDD?

Richard rich.ms

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nathan

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#1118491 30-Aug-2014 12:49

the fix is to upgrade to Windows 8

richms

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#1118525 30-Aug-2014 13:20

Will have a look at 9 to see if they sort out the start menu, otherwise am happy to stay on 7. Hate trying to find apps to open on my laptop running 8.1, have a desktop full of shortcuts which is very sub-optimal.

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#1118576 30-Aug-2014 14:31

click start, type first few letters of app

or, Taskbar and Navigation properties, navigation, show the apps view automatically when I go to start (even Apps, by category)

or, many 3rd party apps add the hierarchical fly out start menu back to Win8

or right click toolbar, new toolbar, C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs