Question Upgrading my D drive(not OS drive). Can I simply copy contents from point A to point B?

jaged

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Aug 17, 2011
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Like the topic says, I want to change out my D drive.
I have software installed on this drive.
Can I install the new drive, copy the contents from the original drive to the new one, remove the old drive & re-letter the new one to D?

Thx
 
Solution
Like the topic says, I want to change out my D drive.
I have software installed on this drive.
Can I install the new drive, copy the contents from the original drive to the new one, remove the old drive & re-letter the new one to D?

Thx
Or, you could do a direct clone from old to new.

Macrium Reflect would do this easily, no hassles.


What are the drives involved?
D

Deleted member 2838871

Guest
I keep all the install executables for every piece of software on my PC in a folder.

Whenever I want to add new drives like I just did with the new build... I save the folder on a non-boot drive... format everything else... install Windows... then install all my software from the folder executables.

Quick and easy.
 
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USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Like the topic says, I want to change out my D drive.
I have software installed on this drive.
Can I install the new drive, copy the contents from the original drive to the new one, remove the old drive & re-letter the new one to D?

Thx
Or, you could do a direct clone from old to new.

Macrium Reflect would do this easily, no hassles.


What are the drives involved?
 
Solution

jaged

Distinguished
Aug 17, 2011
196
5
20,245
I keep all the install executables for every piece of software on my PC in a folder.

Whenever I want to add new drives like I just did with the new build... I save the folder on a non-boot drive... format everything else... install Windows... then install all my software from the folder executables.

Quick and easy.
You're way more organized than I am. I know have 4 drives in this PC. I have some software installed on the C drive & some on D. I have a backup mess on D & E. I'm trying to clean everything up now but it's a headache.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
You're way more organized than I am. I know have 4 drives in this PC. I have some software installed on the C drive & some on D. I have a backup mess on D & E. I'm trying to clean everything up now but it's a headache.
I have 6x drives in this system. All 1TB SSD
OS and applications on one drive.
The others are (mostly) dedicated to their own use case.
CAD
Photo
Games
Video
Random gunk

There is also a nightly Incremental backup of each drive.
 

jaged

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Aug 17, 2011
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I have 6x drives in this system. All 1TB SSD
OS and applications on one drive.
The others are (mostly) dedicated to their own use case.
CAD
Photo
Games
Video
Random gunk

There is also a nightly Incremental backup of each drive.
Hmm I like that clean setup. I may copy that if I ever get these 4 drives I have sorted out.
Right now my OS & some Documents and programs are on an NVMe. I also have 1 SSD and 2 HDD that I've reused from my old PC.
My issue is I'm very disorganized and didn't have a plan with all 4 drives. So I started copying folders from 1 drive to another as a backup but then I'd put some of the backup folders on 1 drive and others on another. *sigh* I dug my grave on this one hehe

I'm going to buy another NVMe and swap out one of the HDD. That was why I was asking.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Hmm I like that clean setup. I may copy that if I ever get these 4 drives I have sorted out.
Right now my OS & some Documents and programs are on an NVMe. I also have 1 SSD and 2 HDD that I've reused from my old PC.
My issue is I'm very disorganized and didn't have a plan with all 4 drives. So I started copying folders from 1 drive to another as a backup but then I'd put some of the backup folders on 1 drive and others on another. *sigh* I dug my grave on this one hehe

I'm going to buy another NVMe and swap out one of the HDD. That was why I was asking.
And other people will advocate for a single large drive for everything.

That above config works for me, might not work for others.
 
Folder naming is the first step in organization.

But there's not much hope if you would give a name like "cool stuff" to a folder containing both recipes and pictures of an F6F Hellcat.

I have one data drive; containing 141,000 files and 26,000 subfolders.
 

Math Geek

Titan
Ambassador
every drive has a purpose and is only used for that purpose. 1 drive each for OS/programs (linux and win vm), data drive highly organized, slack drive for various editing duties, one as a network storage drive, and a couple others with their own duties.

i don't mix and match duties. this way if i am rendering or running some compression or whatever, that drive is busy. it does not get in the way of someone working with the network drive data or me messing with my own personal data. the OS can do something else as well since it's drive is not busy at the moment. windows vm working off it's drive, linux running something else all while the other drives are doing their thing.

i started this type usage a long time ago when we were on slow hdd's. it's less of an issue with the much faster ssd's we have but i still know it is an advantage to allow multiple drives to all work independently at the same time vs a bunch of things all waiting for access of a single drive.

i am an advocate for multiple drives each with its own purpose and not a single large drive partitioned 50 times. :)
 
D

Deleted member 2838871

Guest
There was a guy here a few years ago, wondering how to move forward because he was "almost out of drive letters"

Too many letters in the alphabet...

Lz9bM1d.jpg


I'm good. :cool:
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Yes the Samsung EVO was originally my C drive in another PC. I just dropped it into this new PC & use it now as a storage drive.
Right.
The 1st and 3rd partitions are leftovers from the old OS.
Automatically created.

Just leave them for now.

Sometime in the future, when you really want to repurpose this drive, delete ALL partitions on it.
Or commandline diskpart /clean.
 

jaged

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