Running an OS from a secondary Hard Drive

[Folio77]

Alright, here goes...
A Few days ago, my new DELL Precision 7510 Mobile workstation arrived to replace my old souped-up i7 Latitude. I had a lot of big programs installed on my SSD on that laptop; the full Adobe CC suite, Solidworks, Cinema 4D are among the most demanding...
I did not want to install all of these again, so i used the Precision's expansion slot to install my old SSD, changed the boot order to that, et voila...; everything's where it was before. Had to manage a few licenses here n there, but it all works fine..
However, I'm experiencing a small but very noticeable amount of lag within Solidworks, specifically with only very simple commands like selecting and changing dimensions, other functions seem to work as normal.
I'm not necessarily looking for an Solidworks-Specific answer, but wondering if anyone else experienced such things when booting an OS and programs from a "secondary" hard drive. Is the lag anything to do with that?

All input welcome.

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
Xeon E3-1545M v5, 2.90GHz, 3.80GHz Turbo, 8MB 45W w/iris Pro Graphics
NVIDIA QUADRO M2000M w/4GB GDDR5

 

[greens]

The reason being all your drivers and instructions are for different hardware.

You really can't just move drives from system to system like that.

You are EXTREMELY lucky that it booted at all - the VAST majority of the time it won't boot.

It would in theory be possible to scrub and replace each and every driver, and make adjustments to your registery accordingly...

But this would take MUCH longer than just installing your programs correctly, on a drive with the correct drivers for your machine.

 

[Folio77]

The reason being all your drivers and instructions are for different hardware.

You really can't just move drives from system to system like that.

You are EXTREMELY lucky that it booted at all - the VAST majority of the time it won't boot.

It would in theory be possible to scrub and replace each and every driver, and make adjustments to your registery accordingly...

But this would take MUCH longer than just installing your programs correctly, on a drive with the correct drivers for your machine.

I had a feeling someone would say that - I have seen it said so many times. But I've done this twice now and had near perfect success each time, so i must be really lucky, or these machines are really smart (it did update a load of drivers when i first changed the drives over).

And yet, here I am. But what you're saying, basically, is; start again, properly, from a new drive and everything will work smoothly...
So my next question (i might be being lazy) - The primary Hard Drive is still in this machine; it has Windows 10 installed on it too... Can i install programs to it [from the OS on the drive i'm currently using] and expect them to work if/when i switch to boot from THAT hard drive?

Thank you**

 

[greens]

The reason being all your drivers and instructions are for different hardware.

You really can't just move drives from system to system like that.

You are EXTREMELY lucky that it booted at all - the VAST majority of the time it won't boot.

It would in theory be possible to scrub and replace each and every driver, and make adjustments to your registery accordingly...

But this would take MUCH longer than just installing your programs correctly, on a drive with the correct drivers for your machine.

I had a feeling someone would say that - I have seen it said so many times. But I've done this twice now and had near perfect success each time, so i must be really lucky, or these machines are really smart (it did update a load of drivers when i first changed the drives over).

And yet, here I am. But what you're saying, basically, is; start again, properly, from a new drive and everything will work smoothly...
So my next question (i might be being lazy) - The primary Hard Drive is still in this machine; it has Windows 10 installed on it too... Can i install programs to it [from the OS on the drive i'm currently using] and expect them to work if/when i switch to boot from THAT hard drive?

Thank you**

No, the other operating system wouldn't know that they exist as it wouldn't have it in the registry - you'd be able to see the files but it wouldn't know to run it as a program, basically.

Reinstalling the program isn't going to help you - that isn't the problem.
The problem are duplicated, mismatched, and incorrect instruction sets for your hardware.

I guess maybe do some benchmarking on the swapped HDD, then do some tests on the clean install and see how perormance is.

But there is zero performance loss due to having a program installed in a remote location - it does not need to be on the same drive as the OS, or even the same computer.

 

[captaincharisma]

The reason being all your drivers and instructions are for different hardware.

You really can't just move drives from system to system like that.

You are EXTREMELY lucky that it booted at all - the VAST majority of the time it won't boot.

It would in theory be possible to scrub and replace each and every driver, and make adjustments to your registery accordingly...

But this would take MUCH longer than just installing your programs correctly, on a drive with the correct drivers for your machine.

I had a feeling someone would say that - I have seen it said so many times. But I've done this twice now and had near perfect success each time, so i must be really lucky, or these machines are really smart (it did update a load of drivers when i first changed the drives over).

And yet, here I am. But what you're saying, basically, is; start again, properly, from a new drive and everything will work smoothly...
So my next question (i might be being lazy) - The primary Hard Drive is still in this machine; it has Windows 10 installed on it too... Can i install programs to it [from the OS on the drive i'm currently using] and expect them to work if/when i switch to boot from THAT hard drive?

Thank you**

you cannot drag and drop programs from one drive to another. programs will need to be reinstalled on the primary drive because it needs to update the registry for them to work

 

[USAFRet]

"I've done this twice now" is not a large enough sample.
I've seen it work, I've seen it fail.

"Can i install programs to it [from the OS on the drive i'm currently using]"
Not sure what you mean by this.

Applications need to be installed, from their original install media, in the OS they will live in, while that OS is running.

 

[Folio77]

Thanks, I thought it may be the case that I'd have to install from the new HD/OS.

USAFRet - Thank you; i'm sure you would have seen it fail... and i was ecstatic when it worked. My guess is the systems were similar enough for things to "make the jump".
From my perspective, it has worked 100% of the time. As you say, too small of a sample to be a true reflection of the average, but you can see how it may positively skew my perception.

I will do as Greens suggests (when i get time) and do a proper install on the new OS/SSD and run some benchmark tests (license-permitting).