Question: Reusing boot drive as a storage drive

[WhatDeathFears]

I'm getting a much needed upgrade with no budget. I'm wanting to use my current sata ssd boot drive As a secondary drive in my new build without losing the data on it if possible. What would this process look like, Can I just install windows on my new NMVe drive Then plug in my old sata ssd later and manually delete the old windows folder files on it (just to make some space)? Thanks for any wisdom.

[TylerD321]

You could try cloning the current boot drive to the new drive and then format it. Mileage may vary here though due to drivers depending on what sort of hardware changes you made.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

29 minutes ago, WhatDeathFears said:

Can I just install windows on my new NMVe drive Then plug in my old sata ssd later and manually delete the old windows folder files on it (just to make some space)? 

Yes. you also want to delete any non-data partition (e.g., boot record, recovery partitions) and just merge it with the data one, if possible. Just make sure you go into the BIOS right after re-plugging your old drive and make sure there's no change in the boot order, and the Sata SSD is the last option, to prevent the old bootloader from being summoned. If you have any place to temporary store your relevant data (including a temp folder in your new NVMe, if big enough), you can just manually copy anything worth saving, then nuke the drive, then move the data to the now empty drive.

 

I've done both, and generally recommend the second approach, but which one is more tedious depends on how much data worth saving you have and how it's organized, vs. how much has Windows and software installations abused your drive. It certainly can be done if no other choice is viable.

[wONKEyeYEs]

22 minutes ago, WhatDeathFears said:

I'm getting a much needed upgrade with no budget. I'm wanting to use my current sata ssd boot drive As a secondary drive in my new build without losing the data on it if possible. What would this process look like, Can I just install windows on my new NMVe drive Then plug in my old sata ssd later and manually delete the old windows folder files on it (just to make some space)? Thanks for any wisdom.

If you can a fresh install is always nice.

With a fresh install it would be best if no other drives were attached during install.

After confirming the new install boots correctly you can attach the other drive.

I would initially use a USB external caddy but internal will work,

you might want to go into BIOS to choose the correct boot drive.

Once you have booted from the new OS with the old boot drive installed you can delete whatever files you like on the old drive.

Of course any installed programs on the old drive probably won't work any more.

To clean up the old drive of the old Win install and any page files,swap files, recycle bin, and such,

I like WinDirStat.

And, as @SpaceGhostC2C says, backing up the data you want to keep and deleting the partitions and creating a new one works well too.

If you have files you don't want to loose they should be backed up properly.

[SansVarnic]

-= Moved to Storage Devices =-

[PDifolco]

7 hours ago, WhatDeathFears said:

I'm getting a much needed upgrade with no budget. I'm wanting to use my current sata ssd boot drive As a secondary drive in my new build without losing the data on it if possible. What would this process look like, Can I just install windows on my new NMVe drive Then plug in my old sata ssd later and manually delete the old windows folder files on it (just to make some space)? Thanks for any wisdom.

It'll work but be messy with all the windows folders, cache files, and boot and recovery partitions 

Rather do as @TylerD321suggests and clone your old drive IF windows is installed in UEFI mode