Fresh install of Win10 on PCI SSD - want to keep media drive (1TB HDD) & Ghost Image of Install

[silverzx]

I recently purchased some new goodies - 8700K, X62 AIO, Asus Maximus X, 16GB DDR4 and a PCI 970 EVO 250gb SSD.

I currently have a 500gb 860 SSD and a 1TB WD HDD.

The 500gb SSD has Win7 on and the 1TB is my media drive with pictures/videos etc.

What I want to do is install all my new parts and my new PCI 250gb SSD with a fresh Win10 on.

Can I install Win10 from USB onto the new PCI card, wipe the 500gb (Win7) SSD (during Win10 install) and leave the 1TB HDD alone? So I can just carry on using it for my pictures and videos? Or will Win10 not allow this during fresh install? Will it let me view/use the drive as soon as Win10 installs? Or will I have to unlock/add/show the device?

Also, once installed Win10 and done driver installs I want to create a Ghost Image of the drive so that when Win10 starts slowing down or clogging up I can restore the image and effectively have a fresh ready to go Win10 all over again. I did some reading and I think this macrium software can do what I want but can anyone advise?

Thanks! (>^_^)>

 

[gasaraki]

OK, I'll go down the list of questions.

1-By PCI 970 EVO I think you mean the M.2. drive. So YES, you can have both the M.2 and SATA 860 SSD in at the same time, install Win10 on the new 970 EVO and have Win10 wipe the 500GB SSD at the same time. I would leave the 1TB storage drive unplugged at this time to prevent accidents.
2-Once everything is installed (Win10) take out the 500GB SSD (if you want to) then plug in the 1TB drive. When you boot up in to Win10, the 1TB drive should just work like it did on the Win7 installation. You shouldn't need to do anything.
3-Macrum Reflect can take an image for you after everything is set up. It's a good program.

 

[geofelt]

First of all, do not have any other drives connected while you do your new clean install on the pcie ssd.
If you have another drive connected, windows will put hidden recovery partitions on it, making it difficult to ever remove the drive.

You can later attach your 1tb drive and all your data will be accessible.

Macrium reflect is a clone utility that can do the job.

Since you have a 500gb Samsung ssd, you can use the Samsung ssd migration tool to create a second copy of your new windows 10 install on it.
Just attach the 500gb ssd with windows 7 on it and run the migration app.
It will ask to erase all on the 500gb ssd which gets rid of windows 7.

You might periodically rerun the app to create a more current backup of your C drive.

If you ever need to recover, just boot from your backup.

 

[silverzx]

Thank you both, so just to clarify, can I take a Ghost Image of the Win10 250gb drive once win10 installed and store that as an image on the 1TB HDD without it effecting the drives pictures/files etc? So it stores as an image file rather than jacking my whole 500gb drive?