SSD caddy?

Hi all,

Whilst I don't want to disrupt my current windows 7 installation on a stock HDD, I do pine for SSD speeds regarding boot up. Is there a way of buying SSD and hooking it to the M17rx3 via some kind of caddy (does this connect via USB3?) & having a second installation of Windows 7 on it for the fast booting access that SSDs give. Can I switch easily between booting of my internally installed HDD & the SSD? Is that at all possible?

Thanks,
Wayne

 

Your R3 has a second hdd bay that already has the caddy inside.

 

Excellent. Thanks for the note. Would I be able to have 2 separate win 7 installations if I use that & be able to switch between the 2. Do I need to buy a second windows 7 edition because it is only licensed for 1 installation? Sorry, I know my thoughts are probably an absurd way of doing things but I am curious.

 

I suspect, if you followed the letter of the law, you would need two licenses even to have two separate installs on the same machine. You could dual boot to one drive or the other but there would be no way to "switch" back and forth between running the OS from one drive to the other in real time while running, you would need to shut down and reboot from the other drive. You would end up with two completely unique builds, it would not work out well at all ...

If you want the SSD experience, your best bet is to use the SSD as your boot device with either a fresh install of W7 and then use your current system drive as storage space, or you can create a clone of your current drive and duplicate the contents to the new SSD.

Most folks around here often suggest that you should not use cloning applications to duplicate your current system drive to your new SSD, but recently I have read of some programs which can perform the cloning process without having a negative effect on the "alignment" of the data on the target SSD.

Perhaps some other folks will chime in with their thoughts.

 

Azureal's post about doing a dual boot system is the way to go. You don't want to install two seperate windows installations on 2 seperate harddrives. Use the SSD as your main OS and program drive. Setup a dual boot system off the SSD

 

Hi,

As several other members in this thread have suggested it may be best to use your SSD as your boot volume for performance purposes. Also, there is a great MSDN blog post discussing the Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives that may be useful as you consider your options. Microsoft also has a Microsoft PowerPoint deck detailing the Windows 7 Enhancements for Solid-State Drives that you may also find interesting and beneficial to your boot volume decision process.

From the sound of it, you were asking about a dual boot system as a preventive measure because you did not yet want to reinstall all applications and transfer all data over to the new solid state drive. You also mentioned that you currently are using a standard magnetic drive as your boot volume. A very useful feature of Windows 7 is the ability to create a system image. A system image is an exact copy of a drive. You may want to read What is a System Image? for further information and greater detail on how this will simplify the transition process from one hard drive to another.

Jessica
Windows Outreach Team – IT Pro

 

man you just need to clone the drive, and put it into the SSD (never done it from HDD to SSD, but all internet is full of stuff explaining how to do), then format the HDD

 

Not sure I understand why you would want a dual-boot Windows 7 setup. That seems odd to me. For most people, the idea of dual-boot is typically to have two different operating systems (i.e. Windows and Linux). If you want to preserve the original setup, take the drive out and put it in an anti-static bag for safe keeping. If you ever need to exchange under warranty or sell the system, slap it back in the drive bay, keep your SSD, and you're ready to turn it loose.

Once you experience the difference SSD makes, you'll have no interest in using a HDD as the boot volume. It's a night and day difference... incredible at first. You eventually take the speed for granted and will loathe the slowness of a HDD after using SSD.

If you have a special reason you want a Win7/Win7 dual boot setup, you would need to read the EULA fine print. Your OEM license entitles you to have it installed on the system it came pre-installed on. If there is no verbiage prohibiting two instances of the OS being installed on the same computer simultaneously, you're probably OK. You cannot boot both installations simultaneously in the same system, so it might be irrelevant.