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Can I have WIN 7 Installed on 2 seperate HDs in the same PC??

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DarkFudge2000

Senior member
Folks...I have Win 7 installed on my internal Sata HD and everything is running fine. however, I just ordered a FASTER WD Sata internal drive that I can simply plug into my case's front hot swappable Sata bay.

I want to try 2 things if possible:

1- I want to make a 1:1 copy of my main HD and have it duplicated exactly so I can then boot between either system at startup and do some benchmarks and observations between the performances of each system when running. Is this possible?


2- I want to simply do a clean install of a fully bootable Win 7 install on the NEW 2nd drive, but still have my original Win 7 intact and also bootable from my internal HD when needed. So I can simply choose which Windows install I want to boot from when I start my PC each time....is that possible?


Are either of these scenarios possible and easy to have both drives bootable at anytime when i start my system?...is there extra steps that are involved that I am not anticipating other than simply popping my Win 7 DVD in my PC and installing it to my new SATA Western Digital HD plugged into my front Hot Swappable Sata bay??....Could it be simply THAT easy?
 
I have that arrangement in several systems using mobile racks. The drives are cloned duplicates. I alternate them every week. This provides me with near instant backup system capability without restoration, etc. I do it in my laptops with duplicate drives mounted in caddies and ready to go.

EZ-Swap3.jpg


Actually, in this system there is a 3rd drive I use for beta testing.
 
That or depending on your motherboard you may be able to hit a button (f8 for asus boards) for example and it brings up the boot selection menu and you can select which hard drive from that.
 
F8 is OK most of the time with Asus boards (all mine are Asus) - but over the years, I find hardware solutions are way much better and more reliable than software or firmware.
 
ok thanks kids....just another quick question, how does Windows handle the Serial Keys thingie with 2 sets of Windows installs on each hard drive??

The reason I ask is because I did something similar (but not exact) the other day and it wouldnt let me re use my serial key from the other hard drive...it said that the serial key was already in use or registered or something like that.


This happened when I did a fresh install of Windows on the 2nd drive because I couldnt seem to get the Clone 1:1 drive function working from within Windows 7 with True Image. It gave me some sort of wierd error when I tried. So someone else recommended I use CloneZilla but there were too many steps involving creating a BootDisk to run the cloning from and I just chickened out.

So now I have my original system on my primary drive now and I did a fresh install of Windows on the 2nd drive in the hot swappable bay but Windows is only giving my 30 days to register a valid serial key for the 2nd copy of Windows even tho its in the same pc as my other copy of Windows on the other drive....wtf?? Im not paying for a 2nd copy for 1 PC.

Thoughts?
 
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