1. First of all, your question is not "dumb" at all; as a matter of fact it's a very sensible question given your system's configuration. Roland's advice is more-or-less on the right track but let me flesh things out a bit, OK?
2. We need a bit more information/clarification from you...
Can we assume the TOTAL data contents on your SSD boot drive is less than 100 GB? So that the 100 GB partition you're planning on the "destination" drive, i.e., the 2 TB secondary HDD's 100 GB partition can easily accommodate the TOTAL contents contained on the SSD?
3. And, as you indicate, the 2 TB HDD is currently empty of data so that its total disk-space of approx. 1862 GB of disk-space is either "unallocated", or the disk hasn't as yet been initialized, partitioned, formatted, right?
3. If so, there's no problem. Many of us configure our secondary drive(s) precisely as you anticipate in terms of multi-partitioning the internally-connected secondary drive so that a created partition is designated as the "destination" for the cloned contents of the "source" (boot) disk - the remainder of the secondary drive's disk-space used for storage.
4. Naturally a greater degree of security is obtained if a USB external HDD/SSD is designated as the destination drive to contain the cloned contents of the source drive. But it's rare that both the internally-connected source & destination drives will become simultaneously defective/dysfunctional in the scheme of things.
5. On the other hand if your source drive contained precious, perhaps irreplaceable data, e.g., historic documents, audio/visual material and the like, it would be wise to maintain an external backup source for such for added security. Perhaps archive this material and use the internally-connected secondary drive as you plan for routine comprehensive backups of your OS and perhaps other important data.
6. As to setting up the backup system you envision...to a certain extent it would depend upon
the specific disk-cloning program you would be using because of the multiple partitions that would be created & utilized on the destination drive, i.e., your 2 TB HDD. Not all d-c programs carry out partition-to-partition cloning in precisely the same way.
7. I'll confine my remarks to the program we use - Casper. See
http://www/fssdev.com
Now Casper is a commercial program that costs $49.99 so many users are loathe to purchase a program they can freely obtain on the net, e.g., Macrium Reflect, Easeus Todo Backup, and a host of others. You can do some Google research in this area.
(While Casper has a Trial Version available, that version wouldn't be suitable for your situation because it's slightlly crippled insofar as partition-to-partition cloning operations.)
8. Again, assuming your proposed destination disk is "virgin" at this point - no data contained on the disk...with Casper we would undertake the following:
A. Clone the contents of your 256 GB SSD boot drive to the 2 TB destination HDD. During the cloning operation we would have the option of re:sizing the C: partition. In you case you would resize the partition to 100 GB since that's what you want. Of course, you could re:size it to any size as long as it's less than the actual disk-space of the boot drive.
B. Following the cloning operation you would boot to the newly-cloned HDD (preferably after temporarily disconnecting the SSD boot drive it it's practical) to determine the d-c operation was successful and you have a bootable, functional drive.
9. So now the remaining (unallocated) disk-space on the 2 TB HDD would be available for your storage needs.
10. From time-to-time (and this is IMPORTANT) you should clone the updated boot drive to the secondary HDD so as to maintain reasonably up-to-date clones of your system. Don't neglect this.
11. Again, the above scenario relates to the Casper d-c program we utilize. Other d-c programs would probably carry out this function (assuming they possessed the basic capability of partition cloning) is a different way. So please understand that.
12. And, of course, as mentioned earlier...you could use a USB external drive as the destination drive to serve as the backup clone of your system.
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