2 HDD how to manage

4 posts · originally from https://geek.digit.in/community/threads/2-hdd-how-to-manage.207848/

Looks like I found a spare HDD connected to my desktop. It was there since some time and I forgot about it. It is lying as unallocated space.

I want to know how to use it with the already in-use HDD where I have Ubuntu. It had dual boot Windows 10 which got corrupted during a recent update. I am thinking of install Windows 10 in this spare 500 GB HDD. When I inserted the Windows 10 USB, it is shown as drive 1 while the existing HDD is shown as drive 0 .

Do you think that I should use this disk as GPT ? If yes, how do I do the partition ? I haven't done such things in a while. So GPT, dynamic disk etc sounds alien to me at this point.

It will be great if someone can tell me how I should proceed. If possible, without messing up the data in the first HDD, which is MBR.

Kindly let me know if you need any more info. Thanks.

Never used more than 1 hdd on my system. But I do have SSD as main drive and HDD as secondary drive.
You would need to keep the hdd in GPT only if you want to use more than 4 partitions. If you are happy with 4 partitions, I dont see any harm keeping it in MBR.

What is "disks" showing your second hdd as? Is it coming as '/dev/sdb'?

Vyom said:
need to keep the hdd in GPT only if you want to use more than 4 partitions.

4 is fine for me at this point. In fact, I would be happy with an OS partition and 2 others.

Vyom said:
Is it coming as '/dev/sdb'?

Yes.

Then you just need to format and start using. I don't see an issue.