Making a 'backup' boot partition?

I know there is a lot on the forums here about multi-boot and might just be able to go ahead and achieve this without further advice. Or I might just make a mess of it (and I don't want to do that!)...

Basically, I want to have a clone of my boot partition on C on another physical drive, so that if one disc failed, the other is there to take over immediately. The screenshot above shows my current disc setup. I never managed to get the main boot onto Disc 0, it's on Disc 1, but it's been like that for three years with no ill effects. Both of those discs are SSDs.

I simply want to use the partition shown as E as a copy boot drive, for emergency use. I don't necessarily need to see both in a menu at boot, though that might be the most 'reassuring' option, set with a brief timeout. Or I could just use the boot menu as and when necessary. I assume that if I set the boot menu so that one active partition is in first position and the second active partition is in second position, then in the event of a disc failure, the other drive would take over automatically? I that doable in Windows 7?

What about the recovery partition on Disc 1 though, if that disc failed? Does there need to be a copy of that on Disc 0? I am not even sure what is in that partition. Was it created at Windows 7 (x64) setup? Is it needed to boot? Or is it just a 'reset to defaults' thing?

I would appreciate some advice on the best way to go here. The drives are both Evo 850s, pretty reliable (I'm about to install an Evo 860 2TB drive as well), but I can't afford to have this machine down whilst I repair it, should anything go wrong.

Thanks,

Martin

Yes, I have images of the boot partitions.

I can't use all my 500GB SSD for Windows - I need it for other stuff too

I've only seen a active recovery partition on OEM computers. Did the disk 1 was once used on another computer or with Win 10?

Try this:
- Clone the C: partition on disk 1 to the E: partition on disk 0
- Detach disk 1 from the MB (disconnect power or SATA cable)
- Boot from win 7 installation disk and do a boot repair.

What would that give afterwards, at each boot? Both discs need to be connected after this has been done. Thanks.

Its an dual boot of XP & Windows 7, Right?

Thanks, but no. I want the 'backup' boot partition to be identical to the one I have now, both Win7x64, one a clone of the other.

There are two kinds of disks:
- Legacy - MBR
- UEFI - GPT
Your disk 1 seems to be Legacy - MBR as on Boot able GPT disk you must have a UEFI FAT32 partition, that is not on yours.
On a Legacy - MBR all you need is a MBR and a Windows partition. So if you clone the Win 7 partition of disk 1 to E: partition on disk 0 and set MBR with a Boot repair, disk 0 will became boot able.

Open disk management (C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc) and on View (top menu) - Top - Disk List. There you can see the disk types. I would say that only disk 2 is a GPT disk.
Please take a snapshot of disk type and post here as an attachment.

Always backup your data to an external disk before playing with disk tools.

Like this? Thanks.

As you can see, both disk 0 & 1 are Legacy - MBR.
From the picture of your post#1, fist partition on disk 1 is RAW (not formatted) and is 100% free. There is nothing on it, but it is active (has a MBR set).

Try my suggestion from post #4. To clone C: partition (disk 1) to E: partition (disk 0) use Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free or other software.

Instead of cloning the C: drive, why don't you make an image of the C: partition and store it on the LaCie drive? It will take less space, and it is easy to update.