OS Drive Data Transfer Question...

grifter_66

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 2, 2005
Messages
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I originally had two 1TB NVME drives, one for the OS and Games Pass games and one for other games. Neither was quite big enough so I grabbed and Asus NVME PCI-E expansion cards and two more NVVME drives. I figured I'd do two RAID 0 configurations. I already setup the new drives and I was wondering if I could transfer the original OS drive to the new Raid 0 drive and just turn that into the boot drive without actually having to reinstall Windows. Once that's done I'd like to make an image of my original game drive so I can store it on the new OS drive while I format the original two in a RAID configuration and then restore the game drive image.

I'm hoping there's some cheap or free software out there that makes this whole process quicker and easier.

Thanks for any help.
 
Game Pass games should be on their own drive, if you run into a credential issue, there is no way to delete the games that are on the drive in Windows, you need to format the drive to reclaim the space and reinstall the games.

I personally would leave your install as is on the 1TB and use the other 1TB drive for Game Pass and the new drives in the Expansion card for the other games.

I have Z as my Game Pass Drive, WD Black NVME
D has some games I don't play that often, and use it as a game backup, WD Black 7200rpm drive
X has Steam and EA games, Samsung SATA SSD
C has a couple of Blizzard games and BF4 (these are on there since C was my only SSD in the system for a long time), WD Black 1TB NVME

HAL-X100-Drives-7-20-2021.jpg
 
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I don't need 1 TB just for my OS which is why I'm putting them in a Raid 0 so I have 1.5TB for games pass games and a separate 2TB for all other platforms.
 
Partition off most of the OS drive to use for data.
 
I am not sure about the RAID part but many people have had good success cloning hole hard drive to an other (if you go from smaller to bigger specially)

It was very common for people to do has they went from HDD to SDD than NVME sdd, lot of people even didi it with OS drive without issue.

Some program do it for free, you can look at:
https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-clone-your-hard-drive-with-clonezilla
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

Thanks.
I actually downloaded Macrium last night and halfway through my system crashed hard. I'll try again today.
 
Configuring your OS drive to RAID 0 with NVME SSDs just isn't worth it IMHO. For non-OS purposes, sure, go for it. But the added headaches involved with special drivers and/or other possible burps if your OS driver ever gets a less than stellar windows driver update or you do a MB BIOS update... those events can often cause a lot of headaches with the RAID 0 setup/config with regard to the OS end of things. I'd keep the OS on a single/fast NVME and play with the Raid 0 stuff elsewhere like games/spare data drive. Perhaps it's not as much of a concern these days, but I've had really bad experiences doing RAID 0 setups involving the OS in the past - I.E. Works fine until it doesn't, then you're in for a world of hurt. Just my two cents.
 
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