I am not upgrading 7 to 8. I already have both installed, on two seperate SSDs. I was thinking I may want 8 on the bigger drive now, but it is on the smaller. 7 is on the bigger drive.

Dunno what "hot synching" means.  I have in my PC, 2 SSDs, 4 platter drives, and a 2 TB external USB 3.0.

1. Yes

2. No

3. Yes

4. not really.

[dunno what all the others were smoking.....

....but I want some]...

Thanks Jafo. Now I must clean my screen.  

mhhh i thought i was on point with what i wrote...

dual boot system ( both are on the same drive running in partition ) ups!
7 on the large SSD and windows8 on the small

Sorry Jim it was late 
I didnt read that you used two drives for your dual boot thought you had them in partition (sorry)

 1. Should I just blow the 8 image into the 7 drive, and vice versa? -No If you want to run windows8 with full speed and without bugs!

     2. Should I do fresh installs?  (I'd have to reinstall all my software, ouch!) 
Yes - ( you could also upgrade win7 to windows8 but as far as i know that doesn´t work the way it should and windows8 will not have the performance it has when you install it on a clean drive, for whatever reason)
Therefore i also say NO to No.1 

     3. Does it work ok to put an image from one SSD onto a different SSD?
Depends what you mean with that -If you make a image file you can store it where ever you like ( if you mean - to drop an image of windows7 system folders and allprogs onto  windows8 installation to keep the programs ...NO!!! ) But you can use a image created if it does not include system files on what ever drive you like.

     4. Any other advice
Make a backup of pictures skins wallpapers that are stored on the SSD

Rolo's still miles away...

Jim.... I'm typing this on a Win 7 Ult 64 install....on a 256gig SSD.

It was an image relocated from the original install on a 60gig SSD.

It works just fine [actually better...because the drive is bigger and thus has more 'headroom'...

Imaging relocation DOES work, and the OS itself can manage the drive resizing...

Rolo, I appreciate all the advice, but I think you're still a bit confused about what I want to do. I never had any intention of dropping Win 7 progs and folders into a Win 8 install....lol.  Of course that wouldn't work, duh.

I simply want to restore my images into different drives than they came from. It should work fine.

Ok, I think I'll go the birthday boy's route. What the hey, I always have my backup images, and redundants as well, to fall back on.

Thanks to everyone for the advice!

Jafo, I'll give it a go later today, I'll be back with results.   Happy birthday, BTW.

Thanks!

OK, I tried 3 times. It isn't working. it keeps asking for a repair and it keeps telling me it can't repair it.       

redneck, I have done similar to what you want to do(usually to replace a dying drive before it gets too sick) using a program called HDClone (have used it for this sort of task over 50 times) btw it can also create a backup image onto an external (removable)hdd so you can have both images backed up and restore the one you want to onto the drive you want to.

harpo

@Redneckdude

It likely isn't working for you is because you are not properly replacing the smaller system partitions required, thus not having 'bootable' OS'es.  There are some automated tools that work well in situations such as these like the product line from EaseUS or for the more technically inclined and non-command-line averse my personal favourite program which does this exact thing very well and more (www.drivesnapshot.de).

You will not only need to clone/replace those small individual system partitions at the start of the drive but you will need mark your OS partition as 'active'.  All products pertaining to this operation from EaseUS do this (in my experience) and that nice little german util I linked to above does it also although you have to do so manually.

yeah, because your computer has no idea what to boot now. (the entries in your bootloader do no longer match the installed operating systems.)

inserting a Windows 8 setup disk in a bootable drive might enable you to fix this.

you could also fix this from a Linux live disk.

my advice is to "reinstall" Windows 8 over the existing copied installation, your Windows 7 install should be automatically recognized.

Doc, I needed that laugh, thanks!

LMAO @ Doc.