Can I Run Windows 7 From 2 SSDs Interchangeably?

the new install will try to activate and surely will do it without much issues, because the only difference is the hard disk ,so the license won't give byou much problems

all you have to do is when it asks for the 25 letters and numbers, write them and activate it when you have internet, it should work fine

1. Just reinstalling on the new drive should not trigger any activation issues.

2. Having 2 viable, bootable, used-to-be identical OS's on 2 different drives can lead to a bit of confusion later on. I've seen this more than once in here.

3. For your 'fallback' there are much better ways to do this.


What happened with the cloning operation?
What size are these drives?


A better fallback procedure is to use something like Macrium Reflect. On a schedule you set, have it make an image of the whole drive, off to a folder in a different drive. Daily, weekly, monthly...
If needed, boot up from the Macrium Rescue DVD or USB you create.
Tell it which image to use, and what new drive to recover to.
15 minutes...done.

This is a basic cut down version of my whole backup procedure.
This way you have the benefit of an almost realtime backup, that is as current as you make it, and can't be accidentally booted from.

Am going to guess you are getting the partition msg because the new SSD is already partitioned, or old SSD has multiple partitions and the cloning app is getting confused, or size differential, new SSD smaller than old SSD? you never divulged size information.

U maybe doing this the hard way. Solid states don't die, they are not HD, specially with brand names like Samsung/Intel, can't guarantee u 100%, nothing can, but for practical purposes that's not something on my radar. What is your concern really? that you have to spend time re-installing the OS if it fails, or are you backing up data?

I mention that having a fully installed and bootable "second OS" may be troublesome, not because the two would interact and conflict, but rather that the system may accidentally boot into the second OS, without you knowing.

I've seen exactly this here a couple of times.
One, the BIOS forgot about the primary drive, and just booted up to the second one.
The other was simply a bad SATA cable. The user was QUITE confused when the system booted up just fine, but everything looked just a little bit off and older.
The BIOS had Drive 1 then Drive 2. Upon not seeing Drive 1 due to the bad cable, it did what it was supposed to do and booted up from Drive 2.

Now...if the two drives are in perfect sync, you may not think this to be an issue.
However...if you do not know that Drive 1 is offline for whatever reason, and you happily proceed for a week or two on Drive 2 (unknowingly), if anything happens to Drive 2...you are then left with "what the hell happened here?!? Where's my stuff from yesterday?"

Secondly, I think you're overcomplicating your backup scheme.
Having the 3 different tools each doing there thing is of no use if it does not actually work.

Thirdly, any backup routine is only as good as the last time you actually tested it.

As for Macrium and free vs paid...the paid one is 'only' $70. You might think that too much, and all the others are 'free'. But how much is your data and your business worth?
The only reason I'm recommending this tool is because it works for me. And I tend to stick with what works.
The others might be fine, I just have no experience with them.

Time to do backups, full and differential? Let me lay out my current scheme.
5 drives, all SSD, 4 of them on this backup routine. (The 5th does not count, it is just there for scratch space for various photo and video editing tools).
Paid version of Macrium Reflect v7.

All drives are backed up to a NAS box, across the LAN, onto slow spinning drives.
On Sunday @1, 2, 3, 4AM, a Full image of each drive in this system. The takes anywhere from 1 to 15 minutes, depending on how much data is on each drive.
Then...every night starting at 1AM, each drive has an incremental image, to that same space on the NAS box. This generally takes 1-2 minutes each.
Every 2 weeks (on Sunday AM), those Incrementals are rolled into a Full image for each drive, and the process repeats.

Every Wednesday starting at 8AM, the entire NAS box does its own backup up to a USB connected 8TB drive.

All unattended.

In the unlikely event of a full system meltdown or massive unrecoverable virus, I could resurrect each of those drive images to new drives, or individual partitions on a single slow 2TB HDD.

Another issue with your current procedure is that everything is in one box, your laptop. 1 ransomware virus, and everything is hosed.
And data loss, for whatever reason, is a far more likely event than a dead SSD.

sticker with the 25 letters, not the other thing

once you have two hard disks and you want to isntall windows again, remove one of them when you want to install on the other

you will need to add the second hard disk to the boot menu later, i forgot how to do it well, when i use a boot procedure like this one, i don't let one os to see the other, no boot manager and i do the boot drive selection by bios menu

i justp ress F11 on the keyboard and select the device to boot from

keep in mind that have two installations is double the problems in terms of os updates, antivirus updates, apps updates

keep it as paln b, but try to move away from this configuration

the only way i have two os is dualbooting linux and that is a whole different story

Migration is sort of the same as cloning.
It is meant to move everything to a new drive, and then use that new drive.
And it will generally take up the whole target drive.

Imaging is different. Create an image of the full drive (or parts of it), somewhere else.
And you can have multiple, different, images of Drive A over in Drive B.
In case of need, fire up the rescue tool, select the image you wish, and the drive to apply it to. Go.

In my case, I use the NAS because I have it. An external USB drive would work just as well. As well as a whole different PC.
Previously, the house server/HTPC did this duty. A very low end PC running Windows.
The NAS is not a critical component.


As far as paying for Macrium (or whichever)....I rarely buy something where the free version, or a free legal alternative, works just as well.
IME, Macrium rose to the level of 'buy it'.

It falls into the category of Adobe Lightroom vs the free alternative, Windows vs Linux...some things are that good to warrant buying it.

Not sure what you mean by this.
Source writes to target...not the other way around.

But with imaging, I can have images from 3 different systems, 8 different drives...all living in different folders on one drive.

Either way would work. I guess it just depends on your acceptance of a little downtime while it writes back out to a new replacement drive.

Absolutely, yes.

Of course they're going to tell you they are a registered partner.
Only Macrium knows for sure.