Leave it to UsingWindowsHomeServer, BYOB and the Home Server Show Podcasts to be the first to bring you an article for installing Windows 7 in UEFI on a 3TB Western Digital drive. I dropped the $200 for a 3TB drive at Best Buy and spent this Friday night doing a simple UEFI installation of Windows 7. Read on to find out more about this easy installation.
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Western Digital 3TB My Book Essential
It is a 3TB drive. That is about it. The specs are here.
Equipment Needed
- 3TB Western Digital Drive
- Motherboard that supports UEFI
- 4 Beers (Optional as always)
- External DVD Drive (USB powered)
Now that we have the equipment…lets set this pig on fire.
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3TB My Book Essential – Best Buy Version
Its an external drive. That’s about it. Nothing really to review here. It looks like every other My Book I have ever seen. But like Prom night, there is more underneath…
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It sure costs more than the other drives out there. In addition, I had to drive to THREE Best Buy locations to find the damn thing. It was more expensive than my Prom too. Well in 1988 anyway…
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Installation is just a power cable and USB. I already have a USB 3.0 card in my test PC so connecting is easy. If you are going to get this model then make sure you get a USB 3.0 card for your PC as the USB 2.0 speeds will drive you nuts!
Mental Note: It does NOT come with a USB 3.0 card!
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My Book USB 3.0 Performance
The USB 3.0 performance was very good. The disk was just as fast as being connected via SATA cable. It should be since the spec exceeds earlier SATA.
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I managed to install UEFI Windows 7 on my Intel DG41WV Motherboard by following the steps above, the only difference was that i managed to install it with an internal SATA DVD drive.
I popped the disc into the drive, rebooted the PC and at the boot menu it showed me
internal uefi shell : (name of my DVD drive).
It seems that the BIOS scanned the disc for the efi file. When the disc was not inside, there was no such option. Just a tip to those who don’t have a spare external usb dvd drive around.
Thanks for this tutorial, I manage to install the Windows 7 Prof as downgrade of Windows 8. Only the BIOS settings have to be change in order to boot to a UEFI Downgrade of Windows 7.
very detail and easy to read tutorial! I think i have more understanding on how to do that after reading this. I will try this out. Thank you!