Can laptop HDDs be used as backup/secondary drives for desktop PC?

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eb123

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Hey everyone,

I'm making this thread in regards to the possibility of reusing my laptop drives as backup drives for my custom PC. The reason why I ask is because my current laptop has a 2TB HDD and another older laptop (which I plan to throw away soon) has a working 640GB HDD (This laptop is about 4 years old but went out of use a few years ago). Now for my current laptop, I feel like it should have an SSD (maybe a Crucial MX300 525GB) to operate faster as current boot times are pretty long, even though the laptop itself is 1.5 years old.

Is it recommended to put laptop drives in a desktop PC be it through a direct connection with the motherboard or making them compatible as external hard drives? Would it be recommended to have an actual external or internal drive that's already made for desktop PCs instead? Also, what is the best way of transferring files (including Windows 10) from the old HDD to the new SSD?

Any help would be appreciated and thanks in advance :)
 
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1. I'm going to give you another point-of-view based upon my understanding of your situation and objectives. So let me review what I understand...

2. You new (principal) PC is a desktop and presumably you will, or have already, installed a new boot drive in that "custom PC".

3. Now you have a 2 TB HDD as the drive in your laptop that you plan to retain and you're considering replacing that HDD with a SSD in the laptop.

4. You've inquired about the possibility of transferring the Windows OS on the 2 TB HDD to the new SSD. This is quite doable based upon the following criteria...
A. The current boot (source) drive functions without any problems.
B. The proposed destination disk (the recipient of the cloned contents) is...
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Darthutos

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your laptop hdd should be the same dimension as a modern ssd. I'm going to assume that even a 4 year old laptop hdd uses sata. so just take the 2tb hdd out of laptop, slap a ssd in, and put the 2tb connect it the same way as a ssd into your desktop. do not boot from it with your desktop and under my computer in windows find the drive and your old files and copy and paste. do not copy anything from windows folder or my progams or my programsx86 folders. they are mostly useless system files. I'm going to assume that anything you downloaded or photos/videos/mementos are not in those folders.
 
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eb123

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what about transferring windows from the hard drive into the SSD?
 
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Darthutos

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not recommended.
you are better off worry free with a clean install (your license should transfer automatically, if not just give microsoft a call with your license key).
edit: as for new ssd on laptop, is there a recovery disk the retailer gave you or a bunch of series of keys on the laptop manual that get you to system recovery?
 
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eb123

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Oh I don't have the SSD yet. I'm just trying to figure out what I should do at the moment. also, thanks for your help
 
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Devmalya

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I dont have laptop but i am planning to buy laptop hdd with 2.5 inch enclourse for large backup (nearly 3tb). Is it a good idea or just buy an external hdd

 
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ArtPog

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1. I'm going to give you another point-of-view based upon my understanding of your situation and objectives. So let me review what I understand...

2. You new (principal) PC is a desktop and presumably you will, or have already, installed a new boot drive in that "custom PC".

3. Now you have a 2 TB HDD as the drive in your laptop that you plan to retain and you're considering replacing that HDD with a SSD in the laptop.

4. You've inquired about the possibility of transferring the Windows OS on the 2 TB HDD to the new SSD. This is quite doable based upon the following criteria...
A. The current boot (source) drive functions without any problems.
B. The proposed destination disk (the recipient of the cloned contents) is non-defective.
C. You would be satisfied with your destination disk essentially containing a bit-for-bit copy of your source drive.
D. The disk-space capacity of the destination drive is sufficiently large enough to contain the total data contents of the source disk.

We'll assume A., B., & C. are met but it's not at all clear whether D. is. Since you've indicated you're considering a 525 GB SSD as the new boot drive, the disk-space capacity of that drive may not be able to contain the total contents of your 2 TB HDD. So it would be necessary to have this information. As long at the total contents of the current 2 TB drive are not much more than about 480 GB, a 525 GB SSD could serve as the destination drive. Capiche?

5. There is nothing inherently wrong with carrying out a disk-cloning operation as long as the criteria listed above are met. We've been performing hundreds - if not thousands - of these operations for 20 years or so. In your situation you would need a USB external enclosure or adapter in order to connect the source drive, i.e., your 2 TB HDD. (I'm presuming, of course, that your laptop is equipped with only a single bay (connection) for its boot drive. If the laptop contained multiple bays, e.g., as you have in a desktop PC, then you could connect the destination drive to one of those secondary connections for purposes of carrying out the disk-cloning operation.)

6. I'm not sure I understand your last comment ("I dont have laptop..."), but as far as purchasing a USB external enclosure I assume you're referring to a separate enclosure housing a separate HDD (or SSD) rather than purchasing a "one-piece" commercial product. I would strongly support your choice. My advice would be the same; don't purchase a "one-piece" commercial product; rather purchase a USB enclosure of your choice (ensuring it is capable of accommodating both 2.5" & 3.5" drives) and a HDD (or SSD) of your choice.
 
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Devmalya

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I would strongly support your choice. My advice would be the same; don't purchase a "one-piece" commercial product; rather purchase a USB enclosure of your choice (ensuring it is capable of accommodating both 2.5" & 3.5" drives) and a HDD (or SSD) of your choice- as you said but is there any cons of using an enclousers. that's my worry coz it's 1st tym for me + I had desktop only in my home for my work purpose , all i need now to backup files

 
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eb123

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I'm not sure who Devmalya is so point 6 may not have been towards me lol, but sorry for seeing your reply this late. The 2Tb HDD in my laptop is around 75% full however, so would it be possible to transfer only a certain number of folders/documents from the HDD into the 525 Gb SSD or do all of the documents need to be transferred from the HDD despite not actually needing all of them into the new SSD? Either way I'm having a few other issues as of now because when I needed to transfer a few folders from the HDD in my laptop into my desktop PC about a month ago, something must have gone wrong when I connected the laptop HDD to my desktop's mobo which has now made my laptop act sort of weird with some icons missing, etc.
 
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ArtPog

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For all practical purposes the clone must contain the total contents of the source drive for the disk-cloning operation to succeed. You cannot "select" the files on the source drive to be cloned over to the destination drive. Now there are a number of d-c programs that purport to do just that, i.e., user-selected files from the source drive rather than total contents. It has NEVER worked for us. So by & large we're talking of an "all-or-nothing" situation.

With one important exception.

Taking your 2 TB HDD as an example. Let's say you had (wisely) multi-partitioned the drive so that your "boot" C: partition had been sized as no more than about 450 GB and the remainder of the 2 TB HDD contained one or more other partitions. Under that scenario you could utilize a d-c program to clone the C: partition over to your 525 GB SSD to achieve a bootable destination drive. (Not all d-c programs contain that capability, i.e., cloning just a partition of the source drive, but most do).

The only other alternative in your situation is to delete or transfer files from the present HDD to another HDD so that the remaining data (including, of course the Windows & associated data) would be small enough to "fit" on the 525 GB SSD destination drive.

As to your other "issues", it goes without saying that you MUST resolve those issues before you can even think of cloning data from one drive to another drive. If you clone "garbage", garbage is what you get.
 
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eb123

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Thank you so much for your help. What I'll do then is delete some of the files and transfer the other ones into another hard drive before going through with the cloning process. Also will you be able to help me out with my current issue as no one has responded to my other thread that was made specifically for it. The following link would lead you to that thread and if anything I'll copy and paste the description to my issue from that other thread to here.

Link: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3507762/laptop-acting-strange-transfer-files-laptop-hdd-main-desktop.html

Issue: As the title indicates, the main topic of this thread has to do with my attempt at transferring a few folders from my laptop's hard drive to my main PC by connecting the hard drive directly to the desktop PC's motherboard via a SATA cable. I initially thought that this wouldn't be a problem (some of you are probably shaking your heads at this lol) but after failing to transfer the files (due to numerous permission requests from the hard drive) I then tried to reconnect the hard drive to the laptop. On start up, it seemed to take much longer than usual and after logging in, the desktop looks as shown on the picture below (the "all folders" folder includes most of my documents and folders located on the desktop for privacy reasons). Now is there a way of somehow being able to fix this and restore the laptop into its previous working state especially because I use it for school which starts in about a week or so? Thanks in advance.

 
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