He asked if he cloned one drive to another if he could use either drive. The answer is yes.

If he wanted both drives on one with different partitions (weird) he can use Grub to boot between them.

If he wanted to use both drives separately he can choose the boot device at startup.

Microsoft wont know the difference between the drives as they are both activated and will never be used at the same time.

Are you still lost?

Why do you think he asked this question?

we not here to make assumptions.

Why do you believe this isn't his question, especially after in post #2 answering the question incorrectly.

you having fun following me around?

You having fun following ME around?

no ones following your old ass around.
I saw you misinforming others so I corrected you.
stop being a paranoid old fart

My bad. I keep forgetting and treating you like an adult.

This post was edited by Ghot on Dec 19 2016 11:43am

It doesn't really sound like anyone answered your question. Apologies in advance if I'm explaining something you already know.

Your old hard drive will still have windows OS installed on it if you clone windows to your new SSD. This doesn't mean you can't access it or use it for general file storage. When you install the new SSD into your computer you will have to go into the computer's BIOS (software that runs the motherboard) and tell your computer which drive to boot from. Basically both drives could boot but you will tell your computer to default to the new SSD.

Your old hard drive will just show up as an extra drive in your file structure. This is exactly how I had my old PC set up (the old windows install corrupted but the drive was still good).

Some of the other people in this thread are talking about ways you could set your computer up so you can choose what windows install you want to run when you first start your computer. It's usually used for when you want to run different operating systems such as Linux and windows on the same PC. I wouldn't bother going through the hassle of doing that because there isn't going to be a difference in your two windows installs once u clone it. Plus if you ever wanted to run the old version you can just go into your BIOS and choose that drive.

At the end of the day I would recommend backing up any data from your original drive you want to keep and then wiping it fresh. Sometimes having multiple windows installs can cause headaches and in your case is pretty pointless as you are going to clone them.

One thing, when you install the SSD you should plug it into your SATA 0 port (It's probably where your current drive is plugged into). Some motherboards have a higher speed bus on that port.

Anyway hopefully that answers your questions and again, sorry if I'm over explaining anything.

Couple other adders:

Question 3. Some people like starting with a fresh install instead of 'migrating' especially when upgrading from one version of Windows to another. This is an option for you as your old windows folders will still be alive on the old drive and you can pull old data you want to keep from there.

Question 4: why would you like to do this? As was mentioned by earlier posters technically you need two active licences of Windows to make this work.

This post was edited by Skippy423 on Dec 23 2016 04:30pm