1 SSD 1 HDD, How do I combine them?

[florielora]

So the other day I hard reset my buddies laptop due to the problems we were having with viruses. I wiped each partition and the hard drives that were in it. Here are the specs:

2 Hard drives: 1 SSD 21gb, 1 HDD 1tb
Intel Core i5
NVIDIA GT 750m 4gb memory
8gb RAM

It's a: V7-482PG-5438
Acer Asprice V series

Once it was all clean, I was confused by the small harddirve and installed the os on it. When it was all done we ran into issues with it filling up so fast so decided to redo the process on the 1tb harddrive. It gave us a warning saying it was in GPT mode and might run into issues, confusing but okay. Slow as hell. From this point im assuming the drives must have been raided together somehow but that wouldn't make sense nore do I know how to do it. Im at a wall and very lost if anyone could help me on this issue.

Edit: OS we're installing is windows 8 but wanted 10 in the longrun.

 

[TJ Hooker]

I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a 21 GB SSD. It would be either 32 GB, which should be enough for windows and maybe a few applications, or 16 GB. If it's the latter, it would (or at least should) be set up as a cache drive.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, @florielora!

The SSD on your laptop is meant to be used as cache of the HDD, instead of a stand-alone OS drive. I wouldn't say you have set up RAID, but you have somehow installed the OS onto the SSD which is a rather low capacity and no wonder it fills up so quickly. I'd recommend you to start the clean install again and make sure you select the HDD. The GPT error that pops is most probably because you are using Legacy BIOS mode instead of UEFI BIOS. Usually, GPT-partitioned drives can only be used as primary storage on a UEFI-based motherboards. My suggestion would be to switch the BIOS mode to UEFI and attempt to install Windows onto it again. You should be able to do that through the BIOS settings.

Make sure you install all the latest chipset & SATA controller drivers from the laptop manufacturer's official website. Once the OS is up and running onto the HDD, use this tutorial to Set Up the Intel Smart Response SSD Caching Technology.

Hope it helps. Good luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[rgd1101]

http/www.acer.ca/ac/en/CA/content/model/NX.MB5AA.008
Solid State Drive Capacity 16 GB
It for cache, do what SuperSoph_WD said