So I got a 64G SSD for Christmas and I want to make it my primary boot drive. My current desktop is setup with a 1TB HDD (of which only about 40G is in use) and i want to be able to copy the entire contents of to my new drive (while preserving the data on the 1TB disk) and I want to be able to boot the 1TB disk as a secondary data drive (hopefully without completely destroying the MBR data). I know I've run into problems in the past with disc cloning and I've never really quite been able to accomplish this (my computer complained to me when I had 2 disks with the same MBR ID thingy even though I set one up to be a slave of the other). So does anyone have any idea as to how I can copy the data from one drive to the other, allowing both to be bootable independent of eachother and at the same time allowing both to be on the same system? (this might involve changing a few bits somewhere x{)
You want to be able to boot off both drives? Then why would you ghost the SSD? If you have more than one OS installed on any drive(s) you will get a prompt to pick which you want on startup. This includes multiple copies of the same OS. Not to mention, you really don't want to Ghost an SSD.
well... i guess i dont really need to keep the boot data on the old drive... it was just incase something went wrong with the SSD before i got a chance to break it in
With SSDs they dont fail like normal HDDs. Sure you can get a bad controller and such but usually it will be DOA, fry the first time it turns on from a short somewhere, or work for a very long time. There are a small number of cases where a surge from the PSU destroys the SSD, but that isnt really the SSDs fault is it? Flash NAND is just very sensitive to voltage so when you surge the NAND chips they die. If thats the case the PSU is at fault for the SSD dying prematurely. Anyway, if the SSD works fine when you get it then you should be good for a long time. I would definitely do a new full install on the SSD with all other drives unplugged when doing the Windows install. Sometimes Windows is just gay and even though you tell it to install to the SSD will still put boot files onto another disk for an unexplainable reason. To my knowledge you cannot ghost down to a smaller drive anyway. Only the same size or larger. Unless that feature was added sometime recently. I havent messed with Norton Ghost in a little over a year now. In order to dual boot 2 OSes, you would need to have the boot drive set first in bios that has the MBR on it, and within thaqt MBR needs to be a list of both OSes. To simply ghost an OS would not work to dual boot as the MBR would still list just the 1 OS and you would have to change back and forth by changing the boot order in the bios.
well, if i do a fresh install, what would be the best way to import all of my installed programs (which would take me days otherwise to reinstall)?
Do a full install with other hard drives disconnected. Then after your done connect your old hard drive. Browse to the setup.exe files of your programs you need on the old hard drive and install. Some programs and games might not need to be reinstalled and can just be copied over (like Steam). You do keep your necessary programs setup files on your hard drive for backup right? Cause thats a smart thing to do...
go and DL a live version of your favorite linux version, toss it on a USB then boot it. Once boot you can setup the network and with some command line magic use dd to clone the disk
i actually have a linux partition on the 1tb disk... but the copying thing seems less viable because working around the misalignment doesnt seem too easy... and its not a matter of having the setup files... its a matter of finding all the damn disks that are not well organized into a specific location...