Cloning and combining two Hard Drives

[RegH]

I have a 120gb ssd on which the operating system (Windows 10 Pro 64 bit) is installed and another 960gb ssd on which I installed programs. Disk management shows that each ssd has a 100mb EFI partition.

Originally I wanted to utilize a third hard drive to clone the 120gb ssd with the operating system, then to clone the 960gb ssd to the 120gb ssd and then to clone the third hard drive to the 960gb ssd. This would have been equivalent to swapping the contents of the two ssds. However, the used space on the 960gb ssd exceeds the 120gb ssd.

Now, I am thinking of combining both ssds into one hard drive using two partitions, which I will be named with the same drive letters of the original hard drives (C and S). The C partition of course will have to be bootable, as it holds the operating system.

Is the above possible? Again, I have a third spare hard drive that I can utilize to make things simpler. Is it possible to have both ssds without partitions? If it is possible, how would that work, as programs are looking for the S drive .

Also, would I need to clone each ssd's EFI partition? Or do I only need it for the boot hard drive?

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Reg, and welcome to Tom's Hardware.

The best thing to do here is tell us what your end goal is, and then we can help you with the steps to get there.
Also did you set up the SSD's as basic drives or dynamic drives. Can look in disk management to tell, or better yet attach an image of your disk mgmt. drives to review. Who are the manufacturers of the SSDs?

Possibly you had an active OS on the 960GB SSD previously, as there is no reason or easy way for you to place an ESP partition there purposefully. You need only the ESP partition on the OS drive, but it should also have a 450MB MS RE partition there.
To be safe, I would disconnect the 980GB SSD from the system temporarily and make sure you can boot Win-10 up to the desktop normally. If you had all drives attached when you installed Win-10, the OS has a habit of placing required partitions (sometimes hidden) on a secondary drive, and if you remove one, the system won't boot.

And the answer to your question about having just a single partition on the SSD's, it is very common, sometimes extending the full size of the disk, sometimes with some unallocated space at the end.

 

[RegH]

Hi Reg, and welcome to Tom's Hardware.

The best thing to do here is tell us what your end goal is, and then we can help you with the steps to get there.
Also did you set up the SSD's as basic drives or dynamic drives. Can look in disk management to tell, or better yet attach an image of your disk mgmt. drives to review. Who are the manufacturers of the SSDs?

Possibly you had an active OS on the 960GB SSD previously, as there is no reason or easy way for you to place an ESP partition there purposefully. You need only the ESP partition on the OS drive, but it should also have a 450MB MS RE partition there.
To be safe, I would disconnect the 980GB SSD from the system temporarily and make sure you can boot Win-10 up to the desktop normally. If you had all drives attached when you installed Win-10, the OS has a habit of placing required partitions (sometimes hidden) on a secondary drive, and if you remove one, the system won't boot.

And the answer to your question about having just a single partition on the SSD's, it is very common, sometimes extending the full size of the disk, sometimes with some unallocated space at the end.

First of all, thanks for your help and the warm welcome

1) The end goal is to have the large ssd drive (960gb) be the bootable drive and to keep the information that is stored on the smaller ssd drive (120gb). It would be nice if I can have both drives on one drive without a partition, but I just don't think that it is possible, as there are programs installed on that drive under the "Program Files" and "Program Files (x86)" folders.

2) The drives are basic (see attached photo below)

3) The drives are:
Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 2.5" 120GB SATA III (SV300S37A/120G)
Crucial M500 SSD 960GB (CT960M500SSD1)
The extra drive that I have is a Patriot Blast 960GB SSD - I can only use this drive for transferring files, because it's slated for another pc

4)As for a 450mb NS RE partition, I don't see one and the C drive is definitely my boot drive.

5) I upgraded to Windows 10 while both ssds were attached.

https://postimg.org/image/6xxaxp5yh/

free upload pictures]http://[/url]

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Reg, and welcome to Tom's Hardware.

The best thing to do here is tell us what your end goal is, and then we can help you with the steps to get there.
Also did you set up the SSD's as basic drives or dynamic drives. Can look in disk management to tell, or better yet attach an image of your disk mgmt. drives to review. Who are the manufacturers of the SSDs?

Possibly you had an active OS on the 960GB SSD previously, as there is no reason or easy way for you to place an ESP partition there purposefully. You need only the ESP partition on the OS drive, but it should also have a 450MB MS RE partition there.
To be safe, I would disconnect the 980GB SSD from the system temporarily and make sure you can boot Win-10 up to the desktop normally. If you had all drives attached when you installed Win-10, the OS has a habit of placing required partitions (sometimes hidden) on a secondary drive, and if you remove one, the system won't boot.

And the answer to your question about having just a single partition on the SSD's, it is very common, sometimes extending the full size of the disk, sometimes with some unallocated space at the end.

First of all, thanks for your help and the warm welcome

1) The end goal is to have the large ssd drive (960gb) be the bootable drive and to keep the information that is stored on the smaller ssd drive (120gb). It would be nice if I can have both drives on one drive without a partition, but I just don't think that it is possible, as there are programs installed on that drive under the "Program Files" and "Program Files (x86)" folders.

2) The drives are basic (see attached photo below)

3) The drives are:
Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 2.5" 120GB SATA III (SV300S37A/120G)
Crucial M500 SSD 960GB (CT960M500SSD1)
The extra drive that I have is a Patriot Blast 960GB SSD - I can only use this drive for transferring files, because it's slated for another pc

4)As for a 450mb NS RE partition, I don't see one and the C drive is definitely my boot drive.

5) I upgraded to Windows 10 while both ssds were attached.

https://postimg.org/image/6xxaxp5yh/

free upload pictures]http://[/url]

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Reg,

You have quite a disk setup on your computer!
Is logical to place your OS on the 1 TB SSD and the rest on secondary HDD's

Your system is set up using Basic Disks, MBR partition styles, primary partitions and NTFS formatted volumes.
As an aside, I am curious how you managed to have the 3TB disk set up as a single 3TB partition since MBR partition styles can only address 2.2TB of address space.

There are several ways to have your disks end up the way you requested. I'll give you the way I would do it, but there are different ways to skin this cat.
I would first, disconnect Disk 2 (ITB SSD) and make sure your system boots normally from Disk 1 using that ESP, boot loader and OS on that disk.
Also when you are cleaning disks, removing or changing a partition, make absolutely sure you are selecting the disk or volume you intend to modify. The old adage "measure twice, cut once" really applies.

If your boot process works from Disk 1, I would move the pagefile back onto Disk 1 Volume C.

Next reconnect Disk 2 (1TB SSD, and copy all the files and folders you want to keep, to one of the other HDD's like Disk 0 or Disk 3 temporarily
Then using either Disk Management, the Cmd line appl DiskPart, or a 3rd party partition management product like EaseUS Partition Master, clean Disk 2 so there is nothing on it. Most SSD manufacturers also have an app on CD that will do that, resetting it back to like new.
My choice would be DiskPart, but you have to fully understand how it works and that you are "operating" on the desired disk. No going back. EaseUS is also good, and has a cloning option built in.
Then Clone Disk 1 all partitions over to Disk 2 (1TB SSD), make it Active, and use it as your boot drive. Your other files from other Volumes can then be moved back to where ever you want to store them.

Remember also you can "mount" the other secondary HDD's to an empty folder you set up on the 1TB SSD, so they look just like they are part of that drive, if you want

I am not sure why you ended up with 2 EFI system partitions and no Win Recovery Environment partition, with a Win-10 installation. You can see in the image of this win-7 to Win-10 upgrade how there are actually 3 partitions (MSR Partition, the RE 450MB partition, & the Primary C Partition. No ESP partition since this is an older computer with a standard BIOS).

A final option for you (full evening's work) would be to move all your important folders and files off of the 1TB SSD to the other HHD,s then wipe clean the 1TB SSD, and fresh install Win-10 from a Media Creation ISO Win-10 disk downloaded from MS. As long as you have registered this computer with Win-10 big brother will see it as legitimate.

Lots to consider to get it just the way you want.

 

[RegH]

I have disconnected the 120GB SSD, which has my operating system by mistake instead of the 960GB ssd and the computer booted into Windows 7, my old operating system. It's weird because there was no messages during boot for change of hardware detected, it just switched to the 960GB ssd. I then proceeded to disconnect the 960GB ssd and reconnected the 120GB ssd and this time the pc would not boot up. I had to go into the bios and change the settings to UEFI and to point it to the correct hard drive to boot. FYI, my motherboard is MSI Z87-G45 Gaming, which has given me lots of problems. I remember once the bios was corrupt, so the pc kept on crashing (BSOD). By sheer luck, I decided to flash the bios and that's when the problems stopped.

Anyway, I decided to keep the configuration the same. I just don't want to take any chances. Not in the mood to reinstall all the programs that I have. One day when I have time I will do a clean install and sort out the hard drives.

I still want to thank you for your time and help though.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Reg,
Glad to help.
Now you know why the ESP Partition is on the 1TB SSD, because it is part of the prior Win-7 installation on that drive.

Also reasonable to just leave them as is.
One important concept is to have the OS on an SSD like you do and store basic programs and data in the My Documents folders, then store other stuff out on the secondary HDD.s.
If it would help with organization, you can always create an empty folder in My Documents, like games, then in Disk Management assign a HDD to that path instead of a letter, and it will have everything on that HDD under Games.

John

 

[ArtPog]

Your original objective re combining the contents of your 120 GB boot drive with the 960 GB drive is quite doable so perhaps you might want to reconsider & undertake the operation to create that new configuration.

I'm assuming that at this point-in-time the 120 GB SSD containing a Win 10 OS boots & functions without any problems (after ensuring no other drives are connected at the time). If that is NOT the case, read no further.

You can connect all other secondary drives after you've determined that boot drive functions properly.

The first step in creating the new configuration would be to use Disk Management to shrink the 960 GB S: partition so that a partition of 120 GB unallocated disk-space would be created following the S: partition. Since the S: partition currently contains approx. 767 GB of data, this would permit you to create the 120 GB of unallocated disk-space to contain the entire contents of the C: partition of the 120 GB boot drive.

The next step would be to use a disk-cloning program to clone the contents of the C: partition of the 120 GB SSD to the unallocated disk-space on the 960 GB (actual 894 GB) SSD. Following the d-c operation, remove the 120 GB SSD + all other drives from the PC and connect the 960 GB SSD to the motherboard's first SATA data connector (usually designated as SATA 0 or SATA 1). Initially boot the system with ONLY the 960 GB drive connected.

Now since there appears to be a viable Win 7 OS installed on the 960 GB SSD you would have the makings of a dual-boot configuration. It's possible that upon booting up, Windows will automatically generate a boot menu screen providing options to boot to either the Win 7 or Win 10 OS. If you're uninterested in utilizing the Win 7 OS it would be best to delete the Windows folder residing in the S: partition.

Following the cloning of your present C: partition to the 960 GB SSD as described above, the likelihood is you will not have to change any drive letter on that disk. There's a strong likelihood all (or virtually all) the installed programs/applications on the S: partition will properly function. But it is possible you may have to change the drive letter (or possibly have to reinstall a program) following the disk-cloning operation. In any event this should not be a particularly onerous task.

If you decide to go the route outlined above please let us know how it all works out.