using the main drive as a file drive

[tomjrc]

Thanks to Ray for the Win7 pro disks for recovery How do I now use the main drive that was in my computer with win 8.1 . I am a little afraid of just putting it back in . I have the Win 7 pro on an mSata. my main drive was an ssd 120gb.

[waterloo]

Setup the BIOS (blue thinkpad button or F2) boot order to be CD - SSD - mSATA
Boot from the recovery disk
When you partition the disk during the Windows installation choose the SSD drive.
Done

If you're really worried take out the mSATA until you are done with the W7 installation

[tomjrc]

HI! Thanks. I have the Win 7 o.s. on the c: drive as i removed the main drive ssd with win 8.1 on it.
win 7 pro works. Now I want to re-install the main drive and use it for files. Can i just install it / or do I have to change the old designation of c; drive that it was? Fairly confussing to me

[Neil]

If you want to use the original SSD for storage only, then it will probably be best to zero fill (secure erase) the drive before putting it back in the ThinkPad. If it's just for your personal use, then it might be OK to just format the SSD before using it for storage. If you don't do one or the other, there might be confusion about which drive is the boot drive.

Windows will automagically choose the drive letter(s) for you at boot, and the boot drive will always be "C".