Is it possible to have two identical desktops and bring the hard drives between them

[parker02311]

So long story short my parents are divorced and right now all I have is a laptop(Strix Scar II). I want to get a desktop but the only issue is I want to have the same data on both desktops, so the solution I came up with was buying two identically desktops and just bring the hard drives(SSDs) back and forth. Would this be possible or do you know of any better solutions? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id just sync the data over the internet, and get 2 drives.

 

Id probably just keep the laptop for now, seems a lot less hassle.

[LloydLynx]

If you use Windows 10, I believe it ties the product key to a specific motherboard. You can look up Windows licence not valid after motherboard upgrade and see what I mean.

EDIT: I just keep a portable hard drive with me between houses. It works as a back up location and to help me bring files back and fourth.

[parker02311]

How could I go about syncing the data? The issue with the laptop is I cant upgrade it and none of my games run well.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, parker02311 said:

How could I go about syncing the data? The issue with the laptop is I cant upgrade it and none of my games run well.

use a service like ondrive or google drive?

 

Most game saves are synced with stream also.

 

Id just get a faster laptop intsead of 2 desktops though.

[parker02311]

I have a laptop that costs more then the desktop I plan on getting and its not as good as them, and I mean I need some way to have the same data without having to redownload it or anything like that.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, parker02311 said:

I have a laptop that costs more then the desktop I plan on getting and its not as good as them, and I mean I need some way to have the same data without having to redownload it or anything like that.

Whats your budget?

 

Whats your laptop specs? From a quick google, that laptop should be able to run most games fine.

 

Did you look at those file sync programs? Id just download games on both.

[parker02311]

I do game development and I have some development files saved as a file and not on the cloud(4,196 in total), GTX 1060 and its nearly impossible to develop the game I work for. My budget for a single desktop is 1,700, so in total about 3,000 USD. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, parker02311 said:

I do game development and I have some development files saved as a file and not on the cloud(hundreds of files), GTX 1060 and its nearly impossible to develop the game I work for. My budget for a single desktop is 1,700, so in total about 3,000 USD. 

Id really just get  a $3000 laptop, should be faster than those desktops, and its nice to have a system that can be moved around.

 

Otherwise, id keep the os, and games and programs local to the pcs, and store files on a external ssd or cloud service.

[parker02311]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id really just get  a $3000 laptop, should be faster than those desktops, and its nice to have a system that can be moved around.

I want it to be upgradable which is the issue, and every laptop I have owned gets crapper over time. The one I have right now has already had both of its hard drives break(they were replaced) and it can't run anything anymore, no matter how many applications or background processes I close.

[parker02311]

27 minutes ago, LloydLynx said:

If you use Windows 10, I believe it ties the product key to a specific motherboard. You can look up Windows licence not valid after motherboard upgrade and see what I mean.

EDIT: I just keep a portable hard drive with me between houses. It works as a back up location and to help me bring files back and fourth.

Is it only the C drive thats linked to the motherboard? If so could I just bring two SSDs and have like a small SDD for the C drive? Currently I use a external hard drive for most of my storage due to the fact that you cant upgrade laptops but having a external hard drive is very slow and doesnt work well for the kind of work I do.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, parker02311 said:

Is it only the C drive thats linked to the motherboard? If so could I just bring two SSDs and have like a small SDD for the C drive? Currently I use a external hard drive for most of my storage due to the fact that you cant upgrade laptops but having a external hard drive is very slow and doesnt work well for the kind of work I do.

Yea id setup a portable ssd with your projects and files, and keep the programs, games, and os on the drives in the systems.

 

A external ssd will be much faster, how much space do you need?

[parker02311]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yea id setup a portable ssd with your projects and files, and keep the programs, games, and os on the drives in the systems.

 

A external ssd will be much faster, how much space do you need?

Well from my current usage of my 3 hard drives/ssds I would need 10tb or more. For refrence:
C; 57.4 GB free of 237 GB
D; 784 GB free of 931 GB
F; 7.27 TB free of 9.09 TB (Current external HDD)
And these keep slowly growing as I code more and more things.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, parker02311 said:

Well from my current usage of my 3 hard drives/ssds I would need 10tb or more. For refrence:
C; 57.4 GB free of 237 GB
D; 784 GB free of 931 GB
F; 7.27 TB free of 9.09 TB (Current external HDD)
And these keep slowly growing as I code more and more things.

How much of that space is projects vs games + os + programs?

 

Id put a hdd + ssd in each desktop + external ssd to move files. You can always copy files over the network between the systems aswell.

[parker02311]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

How much of that space is projects vs games + os + programs?

 

Id put a hdd + ssd in each desktop + external ssd to move files. You can always copy files over the network between the systems aswell.

Yeah that was one of my ideas to code a program that automatically uses a cloud server to transfer files over or just doing it manually, I just wanted to know if there was a easier way. I might just get a Alienware laptop if I really dont want to manually do it.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, parker02311 said:

Yeah that was one of my ideas to code a program that automatically uses a cloud server to transfer files over or just doing it manually, I just wanted to know if there was a easier way. I might just get a Alienware laptop if I really dont want to manually do it.

There are plenty of programs that will do syncing files between computers, did you look at any of them?

[parker02311]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

There are plenty of programs that will do syncing files between computers, did you look at any of them?

Do you have any names of them I thought I asked for some in the original post.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, parker02311 said:

Do you have any names of them I thought I asked for some in the original post.

bittorrent sync, resilio sync and others will sync between the computers, some need port forwarding.

 

Otherwise id use a cloud service like onedrive, dropbox or google drive.

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, parker02311 said:

So long story short my parents are divorced and right now all I have is a laptop(Strix Scar II). I want to get a desktop but the only issue is I want to have the same data on both desktops, so the solution I came up with was buying two identically desktops and just bring the hard drives(SSDs) back and forth. Would this be possible or do you know of any better solutions? 

I am guessing that you are still young. What is the time share like between houses? One week at each place? Weekends only? If it was a week or more at each place, I'd just lug the tower between the two. Have a dedicated set of monitors, keyboard and mouse at each place. 

[parker02311]

1 minute ago, Blue4130 said:

I am guessing that you are still young. What is the time share like between houses? One week at each place? Weekends only? If it was a week or more at each place, I'd just lug the tower between the two. Have a dedicated set of monitors, keyboard and mouse at each place. 

Every 3-4 days, currently have a laptop and mouse and a few other accessories I bring back and forth. 

[Blue4130]

3 minutes ago, parker02311 said:

Every 3-4 days, currently have a laptop and mouse and a few other accessories I bring back and forth. 

I'd still do it with a tower. Just like going to Lan parties back in the day. 

[parker02311]

12 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

I'd still do it with a tower. Just like going to Lan parties back in the day. 

Not old enough to remember that kind of stuff but sounds like something that people would do.

[starry]

I was in a similar situation growing up, and this is something I also wanted to do. If you plan to use windows, the activation will reset everytime you plug it into a different computer, which is ultimately why I didnt. Also you will have serious driver issues if the computers are on different platforms (ie an intel computer and an AMD computer). I ended up just using my laptop for a long time, but it had a decently capable GPU so I was fine with that. Eventually I just built  a single tower and I decided to haul it back and forth every week, but I was in a situation where I was able to do that. Keep in mind that even with a tiny case, you still need to bring all your peripherals with you too, which was the most pain-in-the-neck part for me.

 

Ive thought about how I would do that now, with more experience, and this is what I think I would go with:

Have two computers with 2 seperate windows installations, and point the location of your user folders (documents, downloads, pictures, etc) to an external drive on a dock. Also install all your programs and games on the external drive. That way when you switch houses, you can just plug a hard drive into a dock and boot it up, and everything will be there. This, in my opinion, is the most elegant way you could do this, because a file sync setup cannot sync while the computer is off, so you have to bank on 24/7 operation while you arent at that computer. File sync is often very finicky, and I recommend a more simplistic approach over a complicated one, there are less things that could go wrong.

[parker02311]

1 minute ago, starry said:

I was in a similar situation growing up, and this is something I also wanted to do. If you plan to use windows, the activation will reset everytime you plug it into a different computer, which is ultimately why I didnt. Also you will have serious driver issues if the computers are on different platforms (ie an intel computer and an AMD computer). I ended up just using my laptop for a long time, but it had a decently capable GPU so I was fine with that. Eventually I just built  a single tower and I decided to haul it back and forth every week, but I was in a situation where I was able to do that. Keep in mind that even with a tiny case, you still need to bring all your peripherals with you too, which was the most pain-in-the-neck part for me.

 

Ive thought about how I would do that now, with more experience, and this is what I think I would go with:

Have two computers with 2 seperate windows installations, and point the location of your user folders (documents, downloads, pictures, etc) to an external drive on a dock. Also install all your programs and games on the external drive. That way when you switch houses, you can just plug a hard drive into a dock and boot it up, and everything will be there.

Is it possible just to have separate C drives and the have D and F drives that I could take back and forth without the activation issue, and either way I was planning on them both being identical.

[starry]

Just now, parker02311 said:

Is it possible just to have separate C drives and the have D and F drives that I could take back and forth without the activation issue, and either way I was planning on them both being identical.

Yeah just make 2 different C drives, and take the external drives back and forth with you that have all your files. I like to tinker with my linux installation so I keep literally nothing on my install drive, its all external (incase i break it).