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Current Setup:

My machine has four hard drives:

A 237GB SSD C: drive (almost full, nearly 4 years old) with Windows 10. I've got the original Windows 8 installation CD.

Storage Space (Z: drive), for important files. This Storage Space is comprised of two magnetic 1.8TB hard drives.

1.8TB magnetic drive (D:), currently unused and empty. Had some VM hard disk files there but I've moved them to my Storage Space (Z:) to make way for a new OS.

I have a Maximus VI Hero motherboard and UEFI bios.

Background:

I'm worried my C: drive will fail at some point. I need to get up and running again very quickly if this happens. I can't spend any time installing all the programs I need to do my job, especially if there's something urgent I need to deal with. (I realise that something else in my machine could fail, in which case I'd need a redundant workstation. Getting one soon.)

Goal:

I want to install Windows 10 on my spare D: drive. So if I lose the C: drive, I can boot Windows 10 on the D: drive, which will have all the programs I need installed and set up, good to go.

Main questions:

How do I do this?

Can I install Windows 10 on another drive using the same product key or do I need to buy another copy?

Related Questions:

I've dual booted Ubuntu and Windows on laptops before, but that was only one drive. Will I get something like a menu like Grub where I can choose which OS I want? I think I've seen a OS selection menu on Windows computers before.

Do I have to unplug or replug any cables before or after installation?

Will I be able to see the Storage Space (Z:) drive from the new Windows 10 OS?

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    Why not do a simple full image backup that's compressed of the core OS "C" drive, MBR, and SYSVOL, and/or ESP, etc. drives instead? You can take the time to test the backup and restore operations now with something free and setup an automated process and in the event you need to recover, you have everything that's needed including restore instructions. Oct 13, 2017 at 22:01
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    “Can I install Windows 10 on another drive using the same product key or do I need to buy another copy?” - You would be better off cloning your SSD based on your other requirements and questions
    – Ramhound
    Oct 13, 2017 at 22:09
  • @Facebook yes please on the pointers. I have a Synology Diskstation, I use the Data Replicator 3 program to back up the contents of the storage space (important files). I think there's also a new program on Synology that lets you automatically mirror. Need to check that. Also, I do the "Create a system image" thing and save the image to the Synology, but it's very manual and slow and I'm looking for a better option. I also rotate backups onto 3 external hard drives (system image of C: drive and storage space). Just was wondering if what I asked in my question is possible/easy to do.
    – nmit026
    Oct 13, 2017 at 22:14
  • @Ramhound But do you know if it's possible? You're right about cloning. I thought a fresh install of Windows might be sensible though, my C: drive is 4 years old.
    – nmit026
    Oct 13, 2017 at 22:16
  • Okay, just so you know, the backup operations with URBackup can be automated, configured, etc. but with it it's a server software piece and a client software piece. For all the clients you want to have full image OS backups of, you'd install a small client.There's also be some server level settings you'd want to set to ensure it does NOT complete incremental imaging backups and only saves once image per machine. The restore process is manual in the event you need to restore as you have to boot a recovery disk and go thru UI options. Oct 13, 2017 at 22:20

2 Answers 2

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You may want to look at doing a RAID solution so that the two drives mirror each other.

In this configuration one hard disk fails and nothing happens. Your data is still there as it's duplicated. You won't even notice you lost a drive. If you make another instance of windows you have a few issues. The product key, you've lost a bunch of data and programs unless you take the time to duplicate this every night.

At the very least you should backup your data if it really is this mission critical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_1

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  • It is all backup up (see comments on the question), I don't want to go through the restore step however, because that also takes time. Just want to boot and get to work. So the C: drive is 237GB. My spare drive (D:) is 1.80TB. Can I do RAID with a partition of the D: drive or do I have to dedicate the whole D: drive to being a mirror?
    – nmit026
    Oct 13, 2017 at 22:20
  • So the product key is an issue then? I read it was tied to the motherboard? What issues do you mean?
    – nmit026
    Oct 13, 2017 at 22:32
  • @nmit026 You'll likely need two of the same size HDs to create a mirror RAID (at least that's how I've always done it). Please note that redundancy should not be used as a replacement for critical system backups. If it's a super critical system then both redundancy and backups are important. Understanding the restore processes are important as well as if you backup your data and don't know how to restore, then the backups do nothing for you when you need. A common misconception people have is that they do not need to backup system data because they have RAID... LOL Oct 13, 2017 at 22:37
  • @Facebook Yes, for sure, backups aren't any good if you've never tried to restore one. The situation I'm hedging against is some epic disaster that requires my immediate attention and my hard drive failing. Murphy's Law says these two things will happen at exactly the same time. I know it's fine if the mirroring drive is bigger than the mirrored drive, but it seems a shame to waste 1.5TB, would be good to partition it somehow. Can I do that?
    – nmit026
    Oct 13, 2017 at 22:43
  • @nmit026 I would think pushing a full OS image to a new partition on that drive you otherwise waste space would be a good idea actually so you could install UrBackup client and server on the same machine, carve up a new partition of the 1.5 TB and use that as the backup image location. I've never configured a mirror raid like that so I wouldn't have a clue but I'd have a backup before performing such operations as it'd be a shame to hose it up based on raid configuration.Too bad I wasn't just there to show you, then it'd be easy and clear. Oct 13, 2017 at 22:50
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I want to install Windows 10 on my spare D: drive. So if I lose the C: drive, I can boot Windows 10 on the D: drive, which will have all the programs I need installed and set up, good to go. How do I do this?

Use disk cloning software to automatically clone your SSD. If the SSD fails, you would just change the boot order of the devices, and boot to the secondary device.

Can I install Windows 10 on another drive using the same product key or do I need to buy another copy?

You can install Windows 10 on as many drives as you want. Your Windows 10 license, is an OEM license, it has no transfer rights. Windows 10 activation is not based on the storage device it exists on.

Will I get something like a menu like Grub where I can choose which OS I want?

You could make the primary storage device aware of the secondary copy but that would make it more complicated. I do not recommend you do this.

Do I have to unplug or replug any cables before or after installation?

If you don't want your primary storage device to know about your secondary device except when you clone the drive you would need to do this.

Will I be able to see the Storage Space (Z:) drive from the new Windows 10 OS?

Only if you cloned the installation.

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