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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?

nmit026
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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. – Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style Oct 13 '17 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 '17 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 '17 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 '17 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. – Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style Oct 13 '17 at 22:20
  • If you have an imaging solution already, it may be best to test with what you already have rather than throwing another product at it if you can automate such type of backups with that product. – Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style Oct 13 '17 at 22:21
  • @Facebook I'm always happy to test new stuff. URBackup would need a server to run on though, right? I only have a Synology and I don't think it would install on that. Also, no need to delete your comments, they were useful. – nmit026 Oct 13 '17 at 22:30
  • Sorry, I try to keep my comments clean when I can. But URBackup is very light weight for the software install portion for both client and server. If you have a VM, you can install the server on the VM and test. It may be worth the time for you for sure and if you decide to roll with it and run into anything, I have more detail from my setup in terms of full OS image backup and restore operations. https://www.urbackup.org/ ... It seemed a little intimidating to me at first, but after some time and tweaking, it works just fine for one of my smaller data center clients I support. – Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style Oct 13 '17 at 22:33
  • @nmit026 Of course it’s possible – Ramhound Oct 13 '17 at 22:34
  • @Ramhound Sorry, it's not obvious to me, I've never tried it, although I read somewhere that it's tied to the motherboard. Can you only install a copy of Windows 10 on only one machine? John mentioned issues two OSs with the same product key on one machine. Is he right? – nmit026 Oct 13 '17 at 22:44
  • “Can you only install a copy of Windows 10 on only one machine? ” Depends on your license. Your OEM license cannot be transferred to another machine but your not asking about another machine so confused how that question is relevant to the question you actually asked – Ramhound Oct 13 '17 at 23:14
  • @Ramhound OK, thanks. Perhaps you can answer this: John mentioned issues with two OSs with the same product key on one machine. Is he right? That was one of my two main questions. – nmit026 Oct 13 '17 at 23:24
  • @nmit026 I honestly don’t know what problem he was referring too, I have for years, cloned my HDD to a secondary HDD and could switch seamlessly between them using a custom hardware switch – Ramhound Oct 13 '17 at 23:28
  • @Ramhound thanks, that's interesting, you probably can't recommend anything but could you point me towards a "custom hardware switch"? Never heard of that, would like to know more. Thanks. – nmit026 Oct 13 '17 at 23:37
  • I made it myself. – Ramhound Oct 14 '17 at 00:20
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/67091/discussion-between-ramhound-and-nmit026). – Ramhound Oct 14 '17 at 01:06

2 Answers2

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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

obi1kenobi2
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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 '17 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 '17 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 – Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style Oct 13 '17 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 '17 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. – Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style Oct 13 '17 at 22:50
  • In raid you are constricted by your smallest disk. So you'd lose some space but hard drive space is cheap. Downtime is not. Still make sure you keep backups as malware mirrored is just going to ruin both copies of the data but I still think RAID would save the headache of a hard drive failure if that's a big concern. However in the case of raid you don't need to worry about product keys as it's tied to the motherboard. – obi1kenobi2 Oct 13 '17 at 23:26
  • Cool, thanks. Next problem is: how do I mirror my C: drive to my D: drive without messing anything up, using tools in Windows 10 or other software if necessary? Can I mirror the C: drive to a partition on the D: drive so I can use most of the space on that drive (not essential, would be nice). Asked a new question here: https://superuser.com/questions/1259008/mirroring-the-c-drive-to-a-spare-drive-to-protect-against-disk-failure?noredirect=1#comment1851505_1259008 – nmit026 Oct 13 '17 at 23:34
  • If you RAID it will do the mirror for you. If you aren't going this route then take a backup. Do some research and show your work then come back if you have questions. Thanks! – obi1kenobi2 Oct 13 '17 at 23:39
  • I did, hence I am reluctantly here. This seems to be the closest instructions for what I want to do: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-set-mirrored-volume-file-redundancy-windows-10#recreate_mirror but it doesn't have an example for the C: drive, and doesn't show the final result. I've set up RAID arrays before, I wouldn't be asking the question if it were obvious or hadn't had a good poke around the internet first. – nmit026 Oct 13 '17 at 23:58
  • @nmit026 - Your link just describes a software RAID solution. – Ramhound Oct 14 '17 at 01:06
  • @nmit026 for Linux software raid, you do NOT need to dedicate a whole drive to the RAID, only the parts you desire. SO you could use the entire 237GB drive on one, and match that size on the other leaving the rest available for use. – Damon Oct 14 '17 at 03:22
  • In the link you posted they are setting up raid, that will work but I'm your case their H drive is your C drive you'll right can on it and select add mirror then select your D drive. Follow this part of those instructions. Hope this helps. How to create a mirrored volume with data already in the drive – obi1kenobi2 Oct 14 '17 at 13:35
  • @John thanks John, unfortunately I'm on Home edition so that won't work. Need Pro or Enterprise: https://superuser.com/questions/1001042/software-raid-windows-10. Here's the key question that I'm really unsure about and can't find an answer anywhere: does it matter if "the data already in the drive" includes the OS and everything else? I don't want to mess up the C: drive (I do have backups, just don't want to find out the hard way.) If I can do this method on the C: drive where the OS is installed and it works as expected, it's probably time to upgrade. Thanks for your help. – nmit026 Oct 14 '17 at 21:43
  • @John https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/fe628379-e2d1-4468-8457-fca30797dd63/windows-10-64-mirroring-the-boot-drive?forum=win10itprohardware "Yes, mirrored disks requires changing them to “dynamic disks". The disk that you will use to mirror the existing disk must be unallocated. Note: DO NOT convert a basic disk that contains a installed operating system to a dynamic disk. Doing so will cause you to no longer be able to boot or start that operating system." But there are good answers there. Cheers, thank you for your help, much appreciated. – nmit026 Oct 14 '17 at 22:04
-1

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.

Ramhound
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