I successfully cloned my HDD with Windows 10 Home to an SSD. The computer is now booting from the SSD. Here is my question: The HDD is a 1 TB drive with nothing on it but the Windows 10 and the Program folders and the user folders. None of those folders have anything in them yet. I would like to have only the OS and a few select programs on the SSD and use the HDD for other programs and data. I would also like to just leave the OS on the HDD as a backup in case the SSD ever fails. Is there any reason why I can't do that?
After cloning HDD With OS to SSD
- Thread starter BigT
- Start date
- Dec 28, 2019
- 561
- 69
Hi @BigT, welcome to CF.
In theory this should work out fine, in practice your mileage may vary if you attempt to boot from the HDD again months down the line. Any Windows updates wouldn't have applied to the second copy of Windows so you probably will find yourself having to tweak things.
It might be worth instead formatting the HDD, and simply storing files and installing software to it as you wish, and perhaps depending on the size of the SSD do a regular backup of the SSD to the HDD. That way it will be relatively easy to restore your Windows installation and carry on, should the SSD fail. I would note it's more likely the HDD will be the first to go though.
In theory this should work out fine, in practice your mileage may vary if you attempt to boot from the HDD again months down the line. Any Windows updates wouldn't have applied to the second copy of Windows so you probably will find yourself having to tweak things.
It might be worth instead formatting the HDD, and simply storing files and installing software to it as you wish, and perhaps depending on the size of the SSD do a regular backup of the SSD to the HDD. That way it will be relatively easy to restore your Windows installation and carry on, should the SSD fail. I would note it's more likely the HDD will be the first to go though.
- Thread starter
- #3
Thanks for getting back to me on this. I had thought about updates being a problem But I figured I could just boot up with HDD then run the updates before I did anything else. Anyway keeping an updated copy of the SSD on the HDD seems like a good solution. What kind of backup would I do, wouldn't it have to be bootable?
- Dec 28, 2019
- 561
- 69
Essentially you can use a Windows 10 install USB or create a 'System repai disk' that you boot from, then restore the backup.
The tool to do this can be found under Control Panel > System and Security > Back up and Restore (Windows 7) then select Create System Image on the left hand side. The option to create a 'repair disk' is also there, this is the seperate tool you use to boot Windows to a point where you can restore from backup.
It's described as a Windows 7 tool and I imagine MS is planning to phase it out at some point in favour of Onedrive being what they want everyone to use, but I have successfully restored numerous Windows 10 installs from it (I used to create an image of every machine I own, post installing drivers, MS Office, browsers etc but I now only have one laptop that I use so no longer bother)
- Thread starter
- #5
I was going to keep this computer and use it myself. I thought it would be good to keep the second OS on there in case I needed it someday. I don't have a Windows istallation disk, my grandson lost it along with the Product key. I have decided to sell it to somewone else, it's a slightly out of date gaming computer with pretty good guts, so I am just going to wipe and reformat the drive. I appreciate the input ya'll provided.
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