Question Need advice on how to execute an SSD upgrade

[Caveman]

Per Thread Title... Built a rig for flight simulation about 2.5 years ago with a decent 2TB SSD at the time: Samsung 970. I'm running out of space and I have another 2TB SSD (Hynix Platinum P41) I'm putting in the 2nd SSD NvMe slot which is also PCIe4.

Ideally, I want to make the new drive the primary drive for flight simulation and keep other games and school projects on the original drive (about 600GB of stuff).

The new drive will need Win 10 installed. Can I just install the drive and point to it from the original OS install and then format and put Win 10 on the new drive? I'm assuming a lot of performance is left on the table if I try to just use the new drive for programs since the OS is on the original drive. Later on, I can imagine decommissioning the original drive as its own OS and then just use it for gaming programs, data, and other applications for school. Thought on how best to get there from here...

 

[Tech Junky]

I would just add it as a second drive and move the FS over to it to free up space and gain better performance. There's no need to move windows or clone the drive. Just clearing space from the original drive will boost performance overall.

The issue you'll run into here though if you go with your plan is needing to remove the original drive so it doesn't conflict with the new install and put boot files on the original drive. Either remove the original and then put the new one in and do a clean install and then copy the folders over when done and then blow away the SS drive and use it for storage.

In reality they should both perform about the same in terms of speed in routine tasks.