Hey everyone! I have a setup with two SSDs: my main boot drive which is 500GB and another 1TB spare SSD. I usually install extra programs on the larger one to save space on my boot drive. However, I recently purchased a new 2TB SSD and now I don't need to worry about space anymore. The problem is that I can only use two NVMe slots on my motherboard.
I'm thinking of safely removing the spare 1TB SSD, rebooting, and using Kingston's cloning software to clone my 500GB boot drive onto the new 2TB SSD. After that, I plan to take out the 500GB boot drive, put the spare 1TB back in, and boot Windows from the new 2TB SSD. My main concern is whether anything bad would happen if I boot into Windows with the missing 1TB drive, since some of my programs are installed there. I'd only be doing this temporarily to clone my main drive.
I've read that Windows runs all of this internally, not through something like GRUB, so I'm unsure if it would affect the Windows registry or anything. If this method isn't recommended, I could back everything up to the 500GB drive, but that sounds like a hassle since I'd need to uninstall and reinstall a lot of games.
Alternatively, is there a way to clone my 500GB drive to the 1TB drive without wiping it and without interfering with my Windows installation? Like creating a 500GB image file to work from? Appreciate the help!
2 Answers
For your plan, that's totally doable! You could clone the 500GB onto the 2TB drive first. If you want to back up the 1TB, that’s possible too, but it would involve a few more steps like resizing partitions. If you want to keep it simple, consider getting an M.2 NVMe enclosure; I’ve done plenty of cloning that way and it saves a lot of hassle. Plus, you can use the enclosure as an external SSD later on!
Yes, you can definitely remove the 1TB SSD and still boot into Windows without any issues. Just make sure to adjust the partition size correctly on the new 2TB drive after cloning it. You should be fine!
So there’s no risk of problems or errors while Windows is running without that SSD? That’s great to know!
That sounds like an awesome idea! I might just go that route instead. Thanks for the tip!