dual boot

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Merlin
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dual boot

Post by Merlin »

So I decided I wanted to upgrade to a PCIe SSD mostly because I needed to go up to a 1TB drive from a 500GB SATA. I have the new drive in hand and it occured to me that I should be able to do a dual boot type system so my girlfriend can have what would essentially be her own computer. She works from home two days a week and would like to have "her stuff" set up her way and I am used to not having anyone mess with my PC so I thought I could copy my current drive to the new PCIe and run that as my gaming machine and then I could wipe the SATA SSD and do a fresh install of windows etc on that one for her to use as hers. Am I correct that this can be easily done and as far as sofware licenses go can I have two instances of software installed on the same PC but seperate Drives? I have no idea how I would need to set it up such that when the PC is restarted or turned on it would ask which drive to boot from. I assume there would be a BIOS setting for that but Im not sure. Any help/ advise on how best to accomplish by goal would be great!
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Re: dual boot

Post by DJ Tucker »

if I'm not mistaken, at boot you should be given the option of booting from either drive and then let your GF know that shes needs to select sata ssd and not nvme/pcie ssd at boot and she will have her own system the way she likes it :)
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Re: dual boot

Post by KnightRid »

In Windows just set her up her own account with password and she should be able to have everything setup the way she wants and use your account for your setup. You can even move the location of your individual folders (docs, pics, etc) to different drives if you want.

You should have 2 versions of windows if you want to dual boot also, or windows and linux, or linux and linux, or whatever but each windows install needs a license even for only using 1 at a time.
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Merlin
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Re: dual boot

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DUH!!! I didnt see the forest for the trees. All i need to do is set her up her own user on the main windows boot. So new problem. I tried to use ASUS ROG Clone drive to clone my current 500GB SATA SSD to me new 1TB PCIe SSD and it failed twice. The first time I didnt do anything. Just started Clone drive and selected the source and destination and it took about 28 min and came back with a lot of info I dont understand but several of the errors said " device not ready". So I then used the disk manager in windows to format the new drive to NTFS which was basically instant and tried again. Second time was faster but it comes back with errors again. Under the title ATA controller it fails to read uppers and lowers. No clue what thet means but there it is. Also under SCSI controller same error. Fail to read uppers and lowers.
When installing the M.2 drive I used the M.2_1 slot and set the bios to PCIe mode for that slot. It had been set to auto. I also changed the PCIe mod from X2 to X4.
The last time I had to change a hard drive I dont recall copying one to anopther being a hard thing to do so what has changed and what am I doing wrong.
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Re: dual boot

Post by DJ Tucker »

when you use the m.2 slot it will disable 2 of the sata ports. need to check your mobo manual for which sata ports it disables.
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Re: dual boot

Post by Merlin »

I am aware. As I had it set up none of the SATA ports were disabled. I did go ahead and switch to the M.2_2 slot simply becuase it has double the bandwidth of the other one. Now I do have SATA 5 and 6 disabled. Im going to try again and see if it works this time.
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Re: dual boot

Post by DJ Tucker »

keeps us informed :)
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Re: dual boot

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Remember, I am opinionated and nothing I say or do reflects on anyone or anything else but me :finga:
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Merlin
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Re: dual boot

Post by Merlin »

Thats the one I downloaded. I tried to use it and due to my last attempts the new 1 TB drive showed to be 100% full. I did a drive wipe. Took 4 hours and ill try again this weekend.
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Re: dual boot

Post by KnightRid »

Merlin wrote: Tue Jan 28, 2020 8:35 pm Thats the one I downloaded. I tried to use it and due to my last attempts the new 1 TB drive showed to be 100% full. I did a drive wipe. Took 4 hours and ill try again this weekend.
That is what I have used for eons now. Hook both drives up, select clone, pick drives, go have a cigar, come back and its done :)
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Re: dual boot

Post by Merlin »

There are two options listed. One is " Clone" and the other is "system clone". I assume system clone is the one I want but when I select that option my new drive shows up with 0 bytes free of 951 gb. This is after I ran a drive wipe. I dont see an option to format the drive. Is that the problem? does this software not automatically format prior to cloning? I guess the difference I am seeing is that I am trying to create a bootable clone whereas before I replaced drives but installed a clean OS. I am about to pull the trigger and spend the $50 for acronis disk director.
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Re: dual boot

Post by DJ Tucker »

I had the exact same issue. Turns out I forgot to allocate the free space as you do when you wipe a disk with secure wipe or simply writing zero's. Check to make sure you haven't done the same and use system clone as you are cloning the OS.
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Merlin
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Re: dual boot

Post by Merlin »

DJ Tucker wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2020 10:41 am I had the exact same issue. Turns out I forgot to allocate the free space as you do when you wipe a disk with secure wipe or simply writing zero's. Check to make sure you haven't done the same and use system clone as you are cloning the OS.
Im not sure what your refering to or how to check. In the disk manager for windows where the other drive says NTFS for file system the new one says "RAW". Should I jsut use the disk manager to do a "quick format" or should I use another method to format the drive to NTFS file system? I did perform the quick format in ther beginning of this process but perhaps wiping the disk undid that?
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Re: dual boot

Post by Merlin »

I ended up using EaseUS partition master 13.8 to migrate/ clone everything. It did the partitioning etc automatically. I did have to pay for the version that did all that but in the end it was worth the $30
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Re: dual boot

Post by KnightRid »

Merlin wrote: Thu Jan 30, 2020 12:14 am I ended up using EaseUS partition master 13.8 to migrate/ clone everything. It did the partitioning etc automatically. I did have to pay for the version that did all that but in the end it was worth the $30
Glad you at least got it fixed up. Sucks you had to pay but even software developers need to eat :)
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Re: dual boot

Post by DJ Tucker »

disk management should have been able to fix the raw file format but even so you got the drive and clone fixed. as knightrid says even software developers need to eat :)
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