Scavenging ssd's from another pc

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jarodatkinson

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Hey guys....
I've been given a free computer.... Mine is old hard drive..... I would like to scavenge the two 60 gb ssd's from that machine

My question is....do I hook up both the ssd's to my pc, then format them both( they are currently running the os on the old pc in raid configuration).... and then set up raid in the bios ( I know nothing about doing that, I've never run a raid setup.... I presume there's probably a you tube vid but...) ... and then lastly use macrium reflect to copy my c drive to the ssd's?

I know it's probably the stupidest question today, it's just I've never done any of that before, and I want to try to make sure I have the process right before I look up videos and do it....

Thanks
 
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jarodatkinson

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Ok.... I still want to use those ssd's as my boot drive for obvious speed reasons..... what should I do then?....

put the os on one 60gb drive and just have the other one seperate?

I am happy to clean install windows if that is what it takes to connect these two small drives to make one 120GB main drive.....
 
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SkyNetRising

SkyNetRising

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Yes. That's probably the best.
You could use second SSD to move user profile onto it. Also move pagefile and hiberfile away from OS drive to save up space. 60GB is not a lot of space for windows to live in.
 
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jarodatkinson

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That's why I am asking if I should attempt to set them up together in raid to make 120gb.... The system I am taking these from is running the os on the two 60gb ssd's in raid to make 120gb now.... The C: drive shows 106gb of storage available.... I'm guessing windows7 is taking the other 14gb........

I know nothing about it like I said..... should I copy the setup I'm taking these ssd's from?

 
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or.at2497

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i like the idea of running OS on two ssd's in raid0. if you want to do it, then i would recommend to physically disconnect the working drives that are connected to your pc before you start any experiment with the two ssd's. notice that if the installation of the os doesn't work, maybe you need an intel's raid driver that will allow the os to be installed on two ssd's in raid0.
***Notice that raid 0 may double storage's performance but will double also failure risk and data loss. but this is another problem that you can solve by bucking up frequently on addidtional drives or better few drives in raid 1 or 5.
hope my answer helped :)
 
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jarodatkinson

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Yes it definitely does. Do I connect the 2 donor drives first to wipe them of previous data? And should I first try to download that raid0 driver from intel to a usb stick first in case i lose my o.s... (and therefore my ability to go on the internet)...... before trying this......

 
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jarodatkinson

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That's o.k .... I'm definitely going to fresh install windows..... It's a good opportunity to drop all the crapware that builds up over time anyway..... and I have all the stuff I want backed up externally, so it's a no brainer to clean install I think, given the posible drama with mirroring a single drive to a raid set up like you say....

......And I'm somewhat experienced with installing windows 10..... I've had 3 critical os failures that resulted in all my files lost and a clean install required since windows 10 came out......

I miss windows xp lol.... I used that for years, and it never crashed on me once......
 
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or.at2497

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the proccess of creating an array will wipe your disks. and yes, you must hold the driver on a USB drive so you will be able to drop it on the partition before the isntallation is began. at the worst case you will fail and make use in only one ssd but the chance and the fun of doing it worth it.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Raid-0 will give you no performance benefit.
I would avoid it if at all possible.
But, 60gb is not much for a windows C drive.
Still, I think your best approach is to load windows onto one of them. Do not have any other drives connected or windows will put some hidden recovery partitions on them, making it all but impossible to ever run without the second drive.

After install, reattach the second ssd and clear/format it as a data drive.
Many things default to the C drive so you might want to change the defaults on some classes of data to direct them to the second ssd.

 
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or.at2497

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sounds too much complicated. i think that raid 0 will solve the storage capacity problem in a relatively simple way, without reference to r/w speeds.
 
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jarodatkinson

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Sorry for the late reply.... my internet was cut off. I ended up formatting the hdd drive, using macrium reflect to copy the old windows 7 os from the raid 0 arrayed twin 60gb ssd's to it, so I still have that copy and key for windows 7( I wanted to keep it for old gaming purposes in the future, just in case....)... Copying from a raid setup to single disk didn't affect windows 7......

I presume I could have used that program to copy my single hdd to the twin ssd's on my current pc (again set up in raid0), .....but I wanted a clean install for speed........ plus all my files are still on the hard drive anyway, so there was no need to image the old disk for the new set up

Thank you to all who took the time to reply to an amateur.... I knew raid was two drives in concert, but had never dealt with it, nor had I imaged an OS disk before..So you can see, I am a real beginner... Thank you so much for the patient expert guidance....
 
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