Question Adding an SSD as the boot drive to an existing system

[BoomerD]

Not really sure where to put this.
As a result of building a new rig for myself and dismantling an older one, I now have a spare 256GB Toshiba SSD that I'd like to add to my wife's Dell as her boot drive. The system currently has a platter drive that has gotten slow as hell.
I DO NOT want to lose a single file, picture, document...ANYTHING in this PC...or I'll hear about it for years to come. (that's experience talking.)
If I put the SSD in the system, change the BIOS boot order, and install Windows 10 on it without removing the OS from the spinner...won't the two versions (both W-10) "fight" each other?
The ONLY thing I'd want to remove from the existing drive would be the OS.
I can't just clone that drive...1 TB won't fit into 256 GB.

Edit: changed drive to 256 from 240.

 

[BoomerD]

It's because you cloned it which also clones the UUID of the drive. System won't work w/ both enabled. Once you have it booted on the SSD wipe the HDD and you can then put it back inside as extra storage.

That's pretty much what I thought...but I REALLY don't want to wipe this drive...yet. Historically, every time I do...I screw up and delete something she wanted me to keep.

 

[BoomerD]

View attachment 83652

You can safely delete the highlighted partitions on your Toshiba HDD.

If Disk Management refuses to let you delete them, you will need to use Diskpart.

How to Delete a Windows Recovery Partition

You can safely remove the Windows recovery partition if you've backed it up. Recovery partitions are protected, so the process differs from deleting a normal partition.

www.lifewire.com

Just be very sure which disk is which when doing this.

After deletion, you will get 1GB free space to create a new drive before D drive and about 8GB free space to create another drive after drive D. You can also just extend drive D so it will expand to eat up the 8GB free space and claim it as its own.

OK, thanks.

 

[Tech Junky]

That's pretty much what I thought...but I REALLY don't want to wipe this drive...yet. Historically, every time I do...I screw up and delete something she wanted me to keep.

Since you cloned it everything on the HDD is on the SSD. It's a mirror copy.

Put it in an enclosure and format it on another PC if you're unsure. Then you can pop it back into the original PC and copy her lies to it from the SSD or just throw it in a drawer and be done with it.

 

[BoomerD]

Since you cloned it everything on the HDD is on the SSD. It's a mirror copy.

Put it in an enclosure and format it on another PC if you're unsure. Then you can pop it back into the original PC and copy her lies to it from the SSD or just throw it in a drawer and be done with it.

Wimmenz...right?

 

[Tech Junky]

typo / auto correct. I suppose it could fit the paranoia though.

 

[tcsenter]

That's pretty much what I thought...but I REALLY don't want to wipe this drive...yet. Historically, every time I do...I screw up and delete something she wanted me to keep.

I can Team View in or something if you don't want to try delete those unnecessary partitions.

 

[BoomerD]

I can Team View in or something if you don't want to try delete those unnecessary partitions.

Thanks...but no. I think everything is fine for now. I kind of panicked...I couldn't find any of her documents or pics...in either drive. Then I remembered...when I started this process back in January, I went through and downloaded all of them to the other smaller SSD...just to make sure I didn't screw up and delete any of them. Got them all back in her PC in a desktop folder...for now. <phew>
I'm gonna tuck her HDD away...IF I need something from it, I'll still have it.

Thanks to all who chimed in with advice.

 

[tcsenter]

Various user folders in your profile have that desktop.ini (hidden system) file that Windows Explorer uses to include in your aggregated 'library', among other soft linking. This can result in Explorer saving things to the wrong drive if you are not super attentive to where you are saving, etc. When I have this condition of cloning a drive, or even just copied/backup of folders and contents, and don't want to delete everything just yet, I delete the desktop.ini file from those 'older' folders so they stop being included in My Library.

 

[BoomerD]

Various user folders in your profile have that desktop.ini (hidden system) file that Windows Explorer uses to include in your aggregated 'library', among other soft linking. This can result in Explorer saving things to the wrong drive if you are not super attentive to where you are saving, etc. When I have this condition of cloning a drive, or even just copied/backup of folders and contents, and don't want to delete everything just yet, I delete the desktop.ini file from those 'older' folders so they stop being included in My Library.

heh...I should probably do that...I have 3 NVMe drives and an HDD in my system. All 3 NVMe drives have been boot drives at one time or another...and technically, still are.

 

[tcsenter]

heh...I should probably do that...I have 3 NVMe drives and an HDD in my system. All 3 NVMe drives have been boot drives at one time or another...and technically, still are.

Yeah man that's courting a mess if you ever move those drives to another system and then you get all kinds of security/ownership rights or privilege wrangling when trying to do housekeeping (access, delete, move) on the directories or files that you no longer want to keep.

 

[Shmee]

It's generally a a good idea to format drives when moving or repurposing, especially if they have past OS installations. SSDs make this even faster and easier and better, as one can just do a secure erase.

Alternatively, you could do a fresh install, on a drive, and have everything moved to WIndows.old, and then delete the Windows.old folder when not needed anymore. Assuming Windows of course.

 

[BoomerD]

Yeah man that's courting a mess if you ever move those drives to another system and then you get all kinds of security/ownership rights or privilege wrangling when trying to do housekeeping (access, delete, move) on the directories or files that you no longer want to keep.

Surprisingly, when I built this new system back in January, all the new drives were recognized, no Windows issues...it was like the new system had been my old system all along.

It's generally a a good idea to format drives when moving or repurposing, especially if they have past OS installations. SSDs make this even faster and easier and better, as one can just do a secure erase.

Alternatively, you could do a fresh install, on a drive, and have everything moved to WIndows.old, and then delete the Windows.old folder when not needed anymore. Assuming Windows of course.

The INTENT always was to harvest out the programs/data from each drive after I got the new drive installed...however...

 

[Tech Junky]

old system all along

As long as they were all UEFI and not MBR I can see this working. I've moved my system disk on Linux a couple of times but, ADL decided to force the issue to convert from one to the other. Not a big deal but, a bit of a PITA since CSM was supposed to support MBR but for whatever reason it wouldn't boot. Spent way more time TSing the issue than I had planned on. Things get temperamental sometimes with new tech. Switching to ADL caused some other component swaps besides just the boot EFI thing though. Things that just don't make sense but even NEW parts did the same as the prior. Unintended parts needing to be swapped to continue functionality. Besides the issues I ran into something later and ended up blowing away the drive anyway and starting fresh due to an issue. Made some backups of vital settings and formatted things.

 

[BoomerD]

As long as they were all UEFI and not MBR I can see this working. I've moved my system disk on Linux a couple of times but, ADL decided to force the issue to convert from one to the other. Not a big deal but, a bit of a PITA since CSM was supposed to support MBR but for whatever reason it wouldn't boot. Spent way more time TSing the issue than I had planned on. Things get temperamental sometimes with new tech. Switching to ADL caused some other component swaps besides just the boot EFI thing though. Things that just don't make sense but even NEW parts did the same as the prior. Unintended parts needing to be swapped to continue functionality. Besides the issues I ran into something later and ended up blowing away the drive anyway and starting fresh due to an issue. Made some backups of vital settings and formatted things.

The thing that surprised me was that two of the drives that had Windows installed...were the OEM version tied to the old motherboard. By rights, it SHOULDN'T have worked...but it did.

 

[Tech Junky]

The thing that surprised me was that two of the drives that had Windows installed...were the OEM version tied to the old motherboard. By rights, it SHOULDN'T have worked...but it did.

Windows does weird stuff. I think post activation it's just stored in the registry anyway. I can reboot w11 and the system uptime doesn't reset. I use an explorer hack to move the start bar and then the button doesn't work. There's a lot of quirks to W no matter the version. It's like the 11 hacks to install on old CPU and w/o tpm. For things that really matter I use Linux instead.

 

[tcsenter]

So is the Mrs happy with result? You getting lucky tonight or what.

 

[BoomerD]

So is the Mrs happy with result? You getting lucky tonight or what.

Happy with the result? Hell yes. Getting lucky? You betcha...she made me a peach cobbler!

 

[tcsenter]

Getting lucky? You betcha...she made me a peach cobbler!

Now that's what I'm talking about! Good to hear.

 

[Lucy_Oscar]

Following are the methods to set Windows 11/10's SSD as the boot drive:
Press F2/F12/Del to enter BIOS after restarting the computer. Change the boot order in the boot option and configure the OS to start from the new SSD. Restart the PC, leave BIOS, and save the modifications. Allow the machine to start up slowly.