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Question SSD in old system

N

N2gaming

Senior member
Hello Folks, Its been a very very long time since Ive been in here and I hope everyone is doing well.
My question is in my current (Gaming) computer that I built way back in 2012 I have a regular (old school) Master HHD, and two slaves HDDs
so my question is can I install an external SSD electronic drive to boot into Windows 10 while still having my old HHDs? Thanks, James
 
You could use an SSD as a boot drive, but you should use an internal connection, probably SATA for your system. It would be far faster than trying to use USB.

You'd still be able to use the hard drives, which I guess are IDE if you have them in the configuration you've described.

I'd install an SSD and disconnect the old drives, install Windows to the new drive, then hook the old drives back up for additional storage.
 
If the system was built new in 2012, it is likely Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge based, in which case I doubt the motherboard has IDE. That said, he could have built the system around an older motherboard then. But around that time I would suspect all drives are SATA.
 
I think any system that doesn't have native onboard SATA should be scrapped, unless we're talking about some retro rig use case. I don't recall exactly, but even pre- AHCI SATA controllers could be buggy by modern standards.

Likewise, if you're running any IDE/PATA disks, I'd just pull the data off those drives and scrap them. More likely is he's misusing terminology, as PATA wouldn't have one master and two slave drives on one ribbon cable.

A couple months ago, I tried to do pull data off an old IDE HDD that I hadn't turned on in about a decade. I don't recall the drive having any issues before, but it's already dying and I was unsuccessful at data recovery. I haven't put any real effort into it, as I don't think I have any important data on there anyway.
 
If it's an Intel system with an Intel motherboard chipset from that era, an internal SATA SSD will work without any messing around. With an AMD motherboard chipset from that era you may have to disable SATA NCQ.

+1 recommendations against trying to boot Windows from USB - aside from the likely faffing around needed to get it to work, internal SATA has way better response times than USB.
 
I think it is not possible to boot windows from a USB drive anyway (unless he wants Win PE). They discontinued "windows to go". You CAN use a usb drive to image another drive to, but it won't boot unless you then install that drive internally.

Here's what I'd do: Clone the internal drive that has the windows installation onto a new SSD, and just replace the old HDD. Macrium reflect would do the job, as well as other backup programs if he's more familiar with them. This is the simplest approach.

And yeah, if that's a 2012 machine, it's got SATA drives. Unless it was some type of "retro" build using out of date parts.
 
Jimminy said:
I think it is not possible to boot windows from a USB drive anyway (unless he wants Win PE). They discontinued "windows to go". You CAN use a usb drive to image another drive to, but it won't boot unless you then install that drive internally.

Here's what I'd do: Clone the internal drive that has the windows installation onto a new SSD, and just replace the old HDD. Macrium reflect would do the job, as well as other backup programs if he's more familiar with them. This is the simplest approach.

And yeah, if that's a 2012 machine, it's got SATA drives. Unless it was some type of "retro" build using out of date parts.
Click to expand...
Well, you kinda can boot Windows externally, using a VHDx file on the external drive, and then booting with Ventoy. I did this when I needed Windows to mod the BIOS on my TrueNAS for bifurcation. However, even on an NVMe over USB 3, performance is not ideal.
 
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