Install win10 to second partition without wiping data on drive

[Nexxus]

Ok so I am having issues with win 8 and im wondering if its my boot drive, to help figure this out I am going to put win10 on another drive and see if my issues persist there. I have never partitioned a drive though and all my drives have data on them, before I start this I wanna be sure I know how to do this correctly so I partition the drive in question and more importantly dont wipe the data that's already on it.

[obsidian1200]

Just to put this out there, you probably want to look into backing up your data if you can't lose it. Regardless of whether you're messing with partitions, data loss can happen at any time. Just a word of caution you've probably heard before. So, DISCLAIMER, mess with your drives/data at your own risk.

 

I'd also recommend defragmenting the drive you want to use for the secondary OS. It may make the rest of the process easier.

 

Now, onto the main issue. Within Windows, you'll want to go to disk management. In Windows 8, pressing Win+X will pull up the power user menu and one of the options is disk management. This will show you all of your drives and the volumes/partitions on those drives. Go to the drive you want to use and right click on the drive's partition and select shrink volume. (If that option is greyed out, the rest of this won't work. You can try a different volume). Shrink the volume to as small as you'd like, be patient as this may take a while; this will leave you with unallocated space. You'll want plenty of space for Windows 10, I'd recommend around 35GB (what I use in my VM for W10 testing) but you can go smaller per the system requirements. You can either make a new partition, or boot into the Windows 10 installation environment, which can handle making the necessary partitions Windows needs from unallocated space.

 

If all goes well, you will have succeeded in shrinking the existing partition on the drive as well as installing an OS to it.

 

Also, what kind of issues are you having? If you believe them to be mechanical, you can just install seatools and run its tests on the boot drive and see if it passes or fails (or any other HDD diagnostic utility you'd like) without bothering with installing another OS (seatools can also be run from a disk in a separate boot environment).

[Nexxus]

Just to put this out there, you probably want to look into backing up your data if you can't lose it. Regardless of whether you're messing with partitions, data loss can happen at any time. Just a word of caution you've probably heard before. So, DISCLAIMER, mess with your drives/data at your own risk.

 

I'd also recommend defragmenting the drive you want to use for the secondary OS. It may make the rest of the process easier.

 

Now, onto the main issue. Within Windows, you'll want to go to disk management. In Windows 8, pressing Win+X will pull up the power user menu and one of the options is disk management. This will show you all of your drives and the volumes/partitions on those drives. Go to the drive you want to use and right click on the drive's partition and select shrink volume. (If that option is greyed out, the rest of this won't work. You can try a different volume). Shrink the volume to as small as you'd like, be patient as this may take a while; this will leave you with unallocated space. You'll want plenty of space for Windows 10, I'd recommend around 35GB (what I use in my VM for W10 testing) but you can go smaller per the system requirements. You can either make a new partition, or boot into the Windows 10 installation environment, which can handle making the necessary partitions Windows needs from unallocated space.

 

If all goes well, you will have succeeded in shrinking the existing partition on the drive as well as installing an OS to it.

 

Also, what kind of issues are you having? If you believe them to be mechanical, you can just install seatools and run its tests on the boot drive and see if it passes or fails (or any other HDD diagnostic utility you'd like) without bothering with installing another OS (seatools can also be run from a disk in a separate boot environment).

Upon rebooting my comp windows will just refuse to load. I either have to A) restart and hope it takes or B go into the bios and exit out of it for it to take. http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/338133-z87x-udh5-errorcode-a2-hangs-on-boot/#entry4611181you can see an overview of the issue here. It was fixed for a week or so but its started again.

I am in the process of backups and  what not as I type this as well.

[obsidian1200]

Upon rebooting my comp windows will just refuse to load. I either have to A) restart and hope it takes or B go into the bios and exit out of it for it to take. http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/338133-z87x-udh5-errorcode-a2-hangs-on-boot/#entry4611181you can see an overview of the issue here. It was fixed for a week or so but its started again.

I am in the process of backups and  what not as I type this as well.

Good for doing the backups. From that thread, it sounds like your boot drive may be defective, especially if this is the same issue. Definitely worth trying another boot device entirely, a USB would work too.

 

That error you received with the refresh option in the thread you linked me to usually comes from missing system files, specifically a .wim file for the refresh process to utilize. That could be from either a virus or a hard drive on it's way out, but it may also be an issue going back to how Windows 8 was originally installed on your system. My clean install of Windows 8.1, for example, from an OEM disk could not refresh without the DVD until I manually made the refresh .wim image.

 

I strongly recommend trying to run hardware diagnostics. Seatools has been great for me (results usually accurate compared to PC Check from Eurosoft, knock on wood) and you can create a bootable CD for it. Another thing to try is to see if you can boot to CD/DVD/USB, preferably a SATA device, just to make sure there's not something wrong with your motherboard. Hopefully not.

[Nexxus]

Good for doing the backups. From that thread, it sounds like your boot drive may be defective, especially if this is the same issue. Definitely worth trying another boot device entirely, a USB would work too.

 

That error you received with the refresh option in the thread you linked me to usually comes from missing system files, specifically a .wim file for the refresh process to utilize. That could be from either a virus or a hard drive on it's way out, but it may also be an issue going back to how Windows 8 was originally installed on your system. My clean install of Windows 8.1, for example, from an OEM disk could not refresh without the DVD until I manually made the refresh .wim image.

 

I strongly recommend trying to run hardware diagnostics. Seatools has been great for me (results usually accurate compared to PC Check from Eurosoft, knock on wood) and you can create a bootable CD for it. Another thing to try is to see if you can boot to CD/DVD/USB, preferably a SATA device, just to make sure there's not something wrong with your motherboard. Hopefully not.

I dunno it seems to be passing most of the tests I throw at it /I didnt do the long generic but ya other then that it passed all of them. Creating this partition is taking an eternity about how long should it take? 

[obsidian1200]

I dunno it seems to be passing most of the tests I throw at it /I didnt do the long generic but ya other then that it passed all of them. Creating this partition is taking an eternity about how long should it take? 

 

I've had a fair share of drives fail the long generic but pass on everything else, it's worth a try but it takes a long time. For my 3TB drives I ran it on, it took about 6 hours. You can also look into other tests as seatools is really an entry point, imo, compared to some other solutions (I prefer Eurosoft diagnostic tools, but those aren't free and are quite expensive for personal use). It may even be an issue with the interface board on the drive since it sounds like your motherboard has trouble seeing it randomly.

 

It depends on drive fragmentation/disk speed/how much it needs to do to shrink the volume (moving files, for example), so I really couldn't say. I'd check task manager every so often to verify drive activity/make sure the OS didn't hang.

[Nexxus]

I've had a fair share of drives fail the long generic but pass on everything else, it's worth a try but it takes a long time. For my 3TB drives I ran it on, it took about 6 hours. You can also look into other tests as seatools is really an entry point, imo, compared to some other solutions (I prefer Eurosoft diagnostic tools, but those aren't free and are quite expensive for personal use). It may even be an issue with the interface board on the drive since it sounds like your motherboard has trouble seeing it randomly.

 

It depends on drive fragmentation/disk speed/how much it needs to do to shrink the volume (moving files, for example), so I really couldn't say. I'd check task manager every so often to verify drive activity/make sure the OS didn't hang.

Im just trying to get this all up and running as soon as I can so I will pass on the long generic for now and look back after win10 is installed

[obsidian1200]

Im just trying to get this all up and running as soon as I can so I will pass on the long generic for now and look back after win10 is installed

Fair enough, hopefully it will work out and you'll find out whether it's a defective drive or just a case of needing a Windows 8 reinstall.

[Nexxus]

Fair enough, hopefully it will work out and you'll find out whether it's a defective drive or just a case of needing a Windows 8 reinstall.

If you are curious I downgraded my bios to version f9 and it seems it MIGHT be fixed. I wanted this bios before but I was finding it a pain to install. I had f10c which was a beta bios.

[obsidian1200]

If you are curious I downgraded my bios to version f9 and it seems it MIGHT be fixed. I wanted this bios before but I was finding it a pain to install. I had f10c which was a beta bios.

That's good to know and it's great it was an easy fix. Hopefully the issue doesn't come up again. 

[Nexxus]

That's good to know and it's great it was an easy fix. Hopefully the issue doesn't come up again. 

ya we'll see. i thought it was fixed last time so im not gonna say it is yet.

[Mushious]

I was under the impression you couldn't do this as Win8 uses MBR and Win10 exclusively uses GPT.

[obsidian1200]

I was under the impression you couldn't do this as Win8 uses MBR and Win10 exclusively uses GPT.

That depends entirely on how the system was set up. Windows 7 and 8 can use both MBR and GPT schemes on their boot drives, which is a choice that's made during the initial install (either by booting the install disc into legacy or UEFI mode, which can be chosen from the motherboard's boot menu if it supports UEFI, otherwise that option won't appear). Most computers with Windows 8 will probably be using GPT, especially newer ones, but the MBR option is there for those that need it, too.