Advice on options to Dual Boot Windows 10 and Windows 11 on Separate SSDs

I am seeking advice on the best method to dual boot windows 10 (22h2) and windows 11 (23H2) each on separate SSD's
Despite a considerable amount of help from colleagues on this forum to get win 11 installed on unsupported hardware I eventually caved in and did a clean install of Win 11 on another ssd on the basis this will be my default OS with access to Win10 when I want to use software which I no longer have the installation media.

At the moment I can choose which OS to boot using the bios F12 boot menu option but would prefer an easier method. Initially I could not see the windows 10 partitions in windows 11 even in disk manager so I mistakenly installed EasyBCD on Windows 10 but in doing so screwed up the boot loader on the win10 drive.
I have recovered the situation using Macrium Reflect boot ISO and can now again boot into Windows 10.

Is there an alternative to EasyBCD as it throws up a warning about reduced functionality with GPT disks. It seems a bit more complicated with two disks than with the OS on separate partitions on the same disk with presumably only one efi partition? Am I safe installing EasyBCD on Win 11 drive and creating an entry for Win 10 assuming I make the Win 11 SSD the priority boot media. Or is there a better or easier way.
Also once EasyBCD has found to correct partition and created the boot entry can you safely hide the partitions of the other drive by removing the drive letters?
I have included a snip of the drives from Minitool. Disk1 is Win 10 on 256Gb SSD and Disk2 is Win 11 on a 512Gb SSD. The other two disks are my data volumes
Many thanks

My personal preferred method for dual-booting two Windows OSes is to install the secondary OS as a Natively Bootable VHD.

Brief Overview

A natively Bootable VHD is a Virtual Hard Disk file that the PC can boot directly. In brief, the procedure involves creating a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) and deploying Windows to it, then marking that VHD bootable.

Advantages

Booting from a VHD has multiple advantages:

1) Super simple to setup.

2) Unlike a VM, the installation of Windows in a VHD has direct access to your hardware, so you would install all the same drivers as for your physical machine. This is a great way to test that an OS will work on your specific hardware with all the drivers that you have available. If the OS works in the VHD, then it should also work flawlessly on your hardware outside of a VHD.

3) Ridiculously easy to cleanup when done. Because you are deploying Windows to a single VHD file, it is crazy easy to cleanup when done testing. Simply remove that OS from the BCD and delete the VHD. It is literally that simple.

4) If you are installing this instance of Windows using the same edition (Pro, Home, etc.) that you already have activated on your machine, then the instance in the VHD can also be activated without the need for any additional license key. This will allow you to fully utilize all Windows features since you will have a fully activated copy of Windows.

If this sounds like something that you are interested in, please let me know. I will send to you links to tutorials on how to accomplish this, along with some additional notes.

hsehestedt said:

My personal preferred method for dual-booting two Windows OSes is to install the secondary OS as a Natively Bootable VHD.

Brief Overview

A natively Bootable VHD is a Virtual Hard Disk file that the PC can boot directly. In brief, the procedure involves creating a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) and deploying Windows to it, then marking that VHD bootable.

Advantages

Booting from a VHD has multiple advantages:

1) Super simple to setup.

2) Unlike a VM, the installation of Windows in a VHD has direct access to your hardware, so you would install all the same drivers as for your physical machine. This is a great way to test that an OS will work on your specific hardware with all the drivers that you have available. If the OS works in the VHD, then it should also work flawlessly on your hardware outside of a VHD.

3) Ridiculously easy to cleanup when done. Because you are deploying Windows to a single VHD file, it is crazy easy to cleanup when done testing. Simply remove that OS from the BCD and delete the VHD. It is literally that simple.

4) If you are installing this instance of Windows using the same edition (Pro, Home, etc.) that you already have activated on your machine, then the instance in the VHD can also be activated without the need for any additional license key. This will allow you to fully utilize all Windows features since you will have a fully activated copy of Windows.

If this sounds like something that you are interested in, please let me know. I will send to you links to tutorials on how to accomplish this, along with some additional notes.

Click to expand...

Many thanks @hsehestedt. If I were starting from scratch then I would certainly consider your suggestion. However the OS I want to retain is Windows 10 which is going out of support and the OS has installations of certain software that is no longer available due to the company going out of business. I have the software but as the activation servers are gone it will not activate. I therefore need to keep the existing Win10 image.
I tried to upgrade it to Win11 with help from others on this forum, but it keeps failing. I therefore did a clean install of Win11 on a new SSD which will now be my default OS going forward. Hence the dual boot and asking for a easier way to achieve this. There are other boot managers such as EasyUEFI and rEFInd - Boot Manager but perhaps there is a straightforward option using windows tools.
Many thanks for suggestion.

Fozzie Bear said:

Many thanks @hsehestedt. If I were starting from scratch then I would certainly consider your suggestion. However the OS I want to retain is Windows 10 which is going out of support and the OS has installations of certain software that is no longer available due to the company going out of business. I have the software but as the activation servers are gone it will not activate. I therefore need to keep the existing Win10 image.
I tried to upgrade it to Win11 with help from others on this forum, but it keeps failing. I therefore did a clean install of Win11 on a new SSD which will now be my default OS going forward. Hence the dual boot and asking for a easier way to achieve this. There are other boot managers such as EasyUEFI and rEFInd - Boot Manager but perhaps there is a straightforward option using windows tools.
Many thanks for suggestion.

Click to expand...

Even then it is simple - you could clone the W10 installation to a vhd. Easybcd is the easiest to add/remove bcd entries.

Thanks @cereberus Should I set up Win11 SSD as the first boot device in the bios and then install EasyBCD on Win 11 and add Win10 there?

For me the way it is is perfect. Totally independent
You can add Win 10 to the win 11 boot manager (or vice versa). When you boot you will see the two options (win 10 and Win 11) and a count down to load Win 11 (or Win 10).
The downside is that at every boot you will have to choose witch OS to boot or wait for the count down.
I can give you the commands to add the second OS to the boot loader.

Megahertz said:

For me the way it is is perfect. Totally independent
You can add Win 10 to the win 11 boot manager (or vice versa). When you boot you will see the two options (win 10 an Win 11) and a count down to load Win 11 (or Win 10).
The downside is that at every boot you will have to choose witch OS to boot or wait for the count down.
I can give you the commands to add the second OS to the boot loader.

Click to expand...

Hi @Megahertz I am assuming you are not using EasyBCD to add the other OS to the boot manager. If you could show me what to do that would be great. Many thanks

What windows you want to be the default, win 10 or Win 11?

If Win 10, boot from it, open a CMD window as administrator and type:
bcdboot E:\Windows /d /addlast

If Win 11, boot from it, open a CMD window as administrator and type:
bcdboot X:\Windows /d /addlast (replace X with win 10 partition letter - It won't be C:)

Set the default Windows boot drive to be the first boot option on BIOS

Fozzie Bear said:

Disk1 is Win 10 on 256Gb SSD and Disk2 is Win 11 on a 512Gb SSD.

Click to expand...

You should label each as such to easily identify them.



I dual boot Windows 11/10 from separate drives. I used EasyBCD to set it up.