Advice on how to configure 2 ssd's

[slizardwizard]

This might come off as a bit of a noob question. Still pretty new to the world of IT, this is my first build but it turned out to be awesome.

I built my new desktop with one 250gb ssd (I wanted more but ran out of money). I have everything on it, windows 10, files, apps, ect. When I was building my desktop, my laptop died, and I deemed it not worth repair since it was fairly cheap and it would be a couple hundred to fix.

So now I have my 250gb ssd thats in my desktop now, and a separate 125gb ssd I took out of my laptop. Both have win 10 installed

Whats the best way to set these up? Is having win 10 on 2 hard drives useless? I figured if one goes on me, like last night, I can still use my "backup" drive to work until I have time to fix the other on
I would like to have certain things auto-backup from one to the other, does this have to be done manually or can I set it up so certain folders auto-copy from one drive to the other?

This all came about because after a long windows update on the weekend I got caught in a loop of windows auto repair tool and then restarting last night, so I had to re-install windows and lost a bunch of files and all my installed apps. I decided I might be best to have a backup plan to keep me up and running (I do freelance architectural drawings and last night I missed a minor deadline because of all the messing around). I might have just got unlucky with the update, but I would waiting to do the latest update for windows 10 and see if anyone else has had the same issues. Also typing this out made me realize I have to now re-install the 7 discs of GTA V and I probably lost my campaign which makes me feel pretty cheesed

 

[ArtPog]

Well, as far as using the 125 GB SSD as a potential backup...you're in the right church, but the wrong pew...

1. You could use that 125 GB SSD as a backup for your 250 GB boot SSD that's insttalled in your new desktop PC...PROVIDED that the TOTAL DATA CONTENTS on the 250 GB boot drive will "fit" on the smaller-sized SSD.

2. We're speaking here of utilizing a disk-cloning program for this pupose...in effect cloning the contents of the 250 GB boot drive to the 125 GB SSD, the latter "destination" drive either internally installed in your desktop PC system or externally installed as a USB external device.

3. If this appeals to you we can provide further details. Unquestionably you should ALWAYS maintain a comprehensive backup of your PC system. This can be achieved via a disk-cloning operation.

 

[slizardwizard]

Well, as far as using the 125 GB SSD as a potential backup...you're in the right church, but the wrong pew...

1. You could use that 125 GB SSD as a backup for your 250 GB boot SSD that's insttalled in your new desktop PC...PROVIDED that the TOTAL DATA CONTENTS on the 250 GB boot drive will "fit" on the smaller-sized SSD.

2. We're speaking here of utilizing a disk-cloning program for this pupose...in effect cloning the contents of the 250 GB boot drive to the 125 GB SSD, the latter "destination" drive either internally installed in your desktop PC system or externally installed as a USB external device.

3. If this appeals to you we can provide further details. Unquestionably you should ALWAYS maintain a comprehensive backup of your PC system. This can be achieved via a disk-cloning operation.

This is essential what I want to do, and as of now all the contents of the 250 gb will fit. However, if there is a way to have an automatic backup on the 2nd drive but only for certain folders? I don't really need EVERYTHING backed up, I'm really just looking to have my files that are for the freelance work I do backed up, i.e. one or 2 specific folders, and I imagine eventually I will have more than 125gb of info on my primary drive with all the apps and whatnot. Nearly everything else I have would be easily re-installed and whatnot from the web, all my music is on spotify, all my photos on social media or dropbox ect.

would the method you described above copy literally everything, OS, installed apps ect?
like I said it would be nice to have 2 drives both having windows 10, since if one goes down like it did last night I have the option of temporarily working off the smaller drive until I have time to fix the other

 

[USAFRet]

Using the 125GB SSD for your backups will soon prove problematic, simply due to size. That 125GB drive really only leaves you ~85GB usable space.

A better option would be to obtain a 1 or 2TB HDD, and use that for full backups of both SSD's. $45-$60.
Easily done with a variety of current cloning/imaging tools.

 

[slizardwizard]

Using the 125GB SSD for your backups will soon prove problematic, simply due to size. That 125GB drive really only leaves you ~85GB usable space.

A better option would be to obtain a 1 or 2TB HDD, and use that for full backups of both SSD's. $45-$60.
Easily done with a variety of current cloning/imaging tools.

That is the eventual plan. Again I kinda ran out of money during the build, originally planning on getting a couple tb of cheaper hard drive space on top of the ssd, so I want to use the 125gb drive as a backup for key folders and then down the road I'll get another that can handle more data

 

[USAFRet]

Using the 125GB SSD for your backups will soon prove problematic, simply due to size. That 125GB drive really only leaves you ~85GB usable space.

A better option would be to obtain a 1 or 2TB HDD, and use that for full backups of both SSD's. $45-$60.
Easily done with a variety of current cloning/imaging tools.

That is the eventual plan. Again I kinda ran out of money during the build, originally planning on getting a couple tb of cheaper hard drive space on top of the ssd, so I want to use the 125gb drive as a backup for key folders and then down the road I'll get another that can handle more data

For individual specific folder, probably the easiest is either SyncBackFree or FreeFileSync.

 

[slizardwizard]

Using the 125GB SSD for your backups will soon prove problematic, simply due to size. That 125GB drive really only leaves you ~85GB usable space.

A better option would be to obtain a 1 or 2TB HDD, and use that for full backups of both SSD's. $45-$60.
Easily done with a variety of current cloning/imaging tools.

That is the eventual plan. Again I kinda ran out of money during the build, originally planning on getting a couple tb of cheaper hard drive space on top of the ssd, so I want to use the 125gb drive as a backup for key folders and then down the road I'll get another that can handle more data

For individual specific folder, probably the easiest is either SyncBackFree or FreeFileSync.

Excellent, this is what I will try and use then

So last question which may have been answered but I'll just reiterate for my own sake.
So I'll have my primary 250gb drive, and the 125gb where I back up important folders. If I do that, and have windows 10 still installed on the 2nd drive (and maybe my drawing software) this will allow me to still work if the primary goes down on me. This make sense or am I over-complicating/wasting drive space with having 2 drives with their own OS?

 

[USAFRet]

Using the 125GB SSD for your backups will soon prove problematic, simply due to size. That 125GB drive really only leaves you ~85GB usable space.

A better option would be to obtain a 1 or 2TB HDD, and use that for full backups of both SSD's. $45-$60.
Easily done with a variety of current cloning/imaging tools.

That is the eventual plan. Again I kinda ran out of money during the build, originally planning on getting a couple tb of cheaper hard drive space on top of the ssd, so I want to use the 125gb drive as a backup for key folders and then down the road I'll get another that can handle more data

For individual specific folder, probably the easiest is either SyncBackFree or FreeFileSync.

Excellent, this is what I will try and use then

So last question which may have been answered but I'll just reiterate for my own sake.
So I'll have my primary 250gb drive, and the 125gb where I back up important folders. If I do that, and have windows 10 still installed on the 2nd drive (and maybe my drawing software) this will allow me to still work if the primary goes down on me. This make sense or am I over-complicating/wasting drive space with having 2 drives with their own OS?

That is mostly wasting space on the little drive.
OS + some applications does not leave a lot of usable space on the 125GB drive.

Your main drive actually dying between now and when you can get a HDD of proper size to do real backups is a pretty small possibility.

Plus, I have some very weird things happen with 2 semi-identical bootable OS's in one PC.

 

[slizardwizard]

Using the 125GB SSD for your backups will soon prove problematic, simply due to size. That 125GB drive really only leaves you ~85GB usable space.

A better option would be to obtain a 1 or 2TB HDD, and use that for full backups of both SSD's. $45-$60.
Easily done with a variety of current cloning/imaging tools.

That is the eventual plan. Again I kinda ran out of money during the build, originally planning on getting a couple tb of cheaper hard drive space on top of the ssd, so I want to use the 125gb drive as a backup for key folders and then down the road I'll get another that can handle more data

For individual specific folder, probably the easiest is either SyncBackFree or FreeFileSync.

Excellent, this is what I will try and use then

So last question which may have been answered but I'll just reiterate for my own sake.
So I'll have my primary 250gb drive, and the 125gb where I back up important folders. If I do that, and have windows 10 still installed on the 2nd drive (and maybe my drawing software) this will allow me to still work if the primary goes down on me. This make sense or am I over-complicating/wasting drive space with having 2 drives with their own OS?

That is mostly wasting space on the little drive.
OS + some applications does not leave a lot of usable space on the 125GB drive.

Your main drive actually dying between now and when you can get a HDD of proper size to do real backups is a pretty small possibility.

Plus, I have some very weird things happen with 2 semi-identical bootable OS's in one PC.

Ok, well I'll have ot think about keeping Windows 10 on the smaller one or not. As far as small chances, after the update issue I had I would really like to have a second drive to boot from but I do understand their is cons to it

 

[ArtPog]

1. Why don't you simply clone the contents of your present 250 GB SSD to the 125 GB drive since at the present time the TOTAL data contents on that 250 GB drive will "fit" on the 125 GB drive (as you have previously indicated). You certainly don't need a useless Win 10 OS that's currently on the 125 GB drive from a failed laptop, do you?

2. Then just squirrel away the 125 GB cloned drive so at the least you could resurrect your current system to a bootable, functional system should the need arise sometime in the future.

3. Then use one or more other large-capacity drives as suggested by USAFRet for the other purposes you have in mind.

 

[USAFRet]

Ok, well I'll have ot think about keeping Windows 10 on the smaller one or not. As far as small chances, after the update issue I had I would really like to have a second drive to boot from but I do understand their is cons to it

Having an easily recoverable backup of the OS and everything else - Good
Having a bootable second OS on a different drive - Maybe not so good

Seen a couple of people here, where the primary drive and OS was unavailable for a trivial reason, and the system simply booted up into the second drive and OS, without asking.

The first time, the member was completely baffled as to what happened. He powered up, and the system looked exactly as it did 6 months previous. WTF?
Virus?
MS Update or Restore screwing with things?
Aliens?

No, it was simply a bad SATA cable.
He had cloned everything to the new drive, and left the original one in there, and in the boot order.
Power up, and the system can't see the normal drive.
Drops down to the next choice in the boot order...the old drive that had not been touched for 6 months, and he had forgotten it was in there.
Same OS (Win 10, IIRC), just 'not like it was yesterday'. All his current stuff was simply gone.
Took us 3 days to figure it out.

 

[slizardwizard]

1. Why don't you simply clone the contents of your present 250 GB SSD to the 125 GB drive since at the present time the TOTAL data contents on that 250 GB drive will "fit" on the 125 GB drive (as you have previously indicated). You certainly don't need a useless Win 10 OS that's currently on the 125 GB drive from a failed laptop, do you?

2. Then just squirrel away the 125 GB cloned drive so at the least you could resurrect your current system to a bootable, functional system should the need arise sometime in the future.

3. Then use one or more other large-capacity drives as suggested by USAFRet for the other purposes you have in mind.

I mean this is all correct and makes sense to me, I just feel that having all the other clutter that I dont necessarily need on 2 drives rather than just having an OS, my drawing software and my 'important' files on both makes more sense to me. Keeps me from cluttering 2 drives and if I come to the point where I run out of space on my 250gb drive I have the option of moving some stuff to the smaller drive to free up space


Plus, I really dont want to just delete the OS that is on the smaller drive. Somehow I feel like I'b be losing something, since I bought a new windows licence when I built my desktop I have 2 separate licences. How realistic would it be to get the OS from the old laptop drive onto my desktop and then resell the windows licence I bought a couple months ago? Is this legal, possible/not a complete pain in the arse?

 

[USAFRet]

How realistic would it be to get the OS from the old laptop drive onto my desktop and then resell the windows licence I bought a couple months ago? Is this legal, possible/not a complete pain in the arse?

The original license from the laptop is an OEM license, and as such, is not transferable to new hardware.
The only exception to this might be if it was a previous Win 7 or 8.1, and you had Upgraded it to Win 10.

But if it came with Win 10, again...no.

 

[slizardwizard]

How realistic would it be to get the OS from the old laptop drive onto my desktop and then resell the windows licence I bought a couple months ago? Is this legal, possible/not a complete pain in the arse?

The original license from the laptop is an OEM license, and as such, is not transferable to new hardware.
The only exception to this might be if it was a previous Win 7 or 8.1, and you had Upgraded it to Win 10.

But if it came with Win 10, again...no.

Dang.

Alright, well thanks for the help fellas. Looks like I'll just be doing a full backup and then just re-evaluating how I'm going to do it once i run out of space on the smaller drive

 

[USAFRet]

Alright, well thanks for the help fellas. Looks like I'll just be doing a full backup and then just re-evaluating how I'm going to do it once i run out of space on the smaller drive

$45 for a 1TB drive fixes that issue completely.
That gives you full use of all the space on the 250 and 128GB SSD's, and a large empty location for the required backup plan.

How much is your data worth to you?

 

[slizardwizard]

Alright, well thanks for the help fellas. Looks like I'll just be doing a full backup and then just re-evaluating how I'm going to do it once i run out of space on the smaller drive

$45 for a 1TB drive fixes that issue completely.
That gives you full use of all the space on the 250 and 128GB SSD's, and a large empty location for the required backup plan.

How much is your data worth to you?

A solid point but I have 2 (now 3) backup points, hard drive, flash drive, and cloud storage (and soon to be a second hard drive) for the stuff that would be detrimental to lose. Like I said as of now I don't have much data, everything is online and I'm just starting my at home work. Once I get some additional cash flow i'll be buying another
I just want the second internal drive up and running ASAP so I don't miss deadlines for drive related IT issues, for now storage space isn't a real concern