Disconnecting internal drives before install

Greetings. I know this has probably been discussed to death but I've read different opinions about this. If I want to do an upgrade or clean install of Windows 11, is it absolutely necessary to disconnect internal drives? My PC has two NVMe drives and two mechanical drives. I wouldn't feel too bad about disconnecting the mechanical drives but I'm loathe to try to disconnect the NVMe drives - removing screws, heatsinks, moving the GPU, etc. An opinion on this that I'd like to believe is that it's just a precaution to ensure you don't install Windows on the wrong drive. I think I can be careful enough to do that, but I've also read that Windows "might" put files on drives other than the boot drive which I wouldn't care for. Why Windows "might" do this (if it's true) is a mystery to me.

Rob

I never disconnect other drives when doing a clean install and have never had a problem with files going elsewhere.

It can't hurt to do it.. I don't but like I said it can't hurt.

RFS & BunnyJ - Thanks for your replies. I understand it could be done as a precaution and in fact I used to do that on my older machine "just because". This PC is too new and too expensive and I can just see myself dropping a screw into the motherboard, never to be found again. :)

Rob

OldMainframeGuy said:

RFS & BunnyJ - Thanks for your replies. I understand it could be done as a precaution and in fact I used to do that on my older machine "just because". This PC is too new and too expensive and I can just see myself dropping a screw into the motherboard, never to be found again. :)

Rob

Click to expand...

You should be ok to not disconnect the drives. I recently did a clean install of 11 when I got a new motherboard, etc, and the only thing I disconnected was the external drive I have.

I've never disconnected drives for an install

A couple thoughts on the matter:

1) As noted, there is no requirement to disconnect other drives. It just helps to make sure are partitions are created on the drive you selected.

2) As an alternative to physically disconnecting drives, the BIOS on some systems will let you disable SATA / NVMe ports temporarily.

3) If you do not disconnect drives or disable ports, you could go through the installation and after you select the location to install to and proceed, press SHIFT + F10 to open a command prompt. Run "diskpart", then "select disk x" (where x is the disk number to which you started the installation), then "list partition". If all went well, you will see 4 partitions, something like this:

I have never done that, always seemed a bit pointless to me

I'm one of those people that, if possible, disconnect all other drives when doing a Windows install. I used to dual boot and the one time I forgot the boot partition got moved to drive D. I was thinking about dual boot this desktop, but it has an NVMe drive and I'm not going to chance damaging it. Now instead of dual booting, I use VMs.

@OldMainframeGuy

1. Generally, if Windows has the room... it won't look for other locations to create certain partitions.
2. As mentioned above... BIOSes usually let you enable/disable select SATA ports or drives.
3. If unhooking the other drives is easy... go for it. It can't hurt.

Mainly though, Make sure the drive you are installing Windows to, has the room to create w/e partitions it wants.

hsehestedt said:

A couple thoughts on the matter:

1) As noted, there is no requirement to disconnect other drives. It just helps to make sure are partitions are created on the drive you selected.

2) As an alternative to physically disconnecting drives, the BIOS on some systems will let you disable SATA / NVMe ports temporarily.

3) If you do not disconnect drives or disable ports, you could go through the installation and after you select the location to install to and proceed, press SHIFT + F10 to open a command prompt. Run "diskpart", then "select disk x" (where x is the disk number to which you started the installation), then "list partition". If all went well, you will see 4 partitions, something like this:

View attachment 18763

Click to expand...

Ive literally just experienced this today and can now see another drive over the nvme drive with a boot sector due to the diskpart X assignment - so whilst install may not seem an issue - post install troubleshooting I would recommend disconnect hard drives, usbs and anything superfluous to the process.

hsehestedt said:

A couple thoughts on the matter:

1) As noted, there is no requirement to disconnect other drives. It just helps to make sure are partitions are created on the drive you selected.

2) As an alternative to physically disconnecting drives, the BIOS on some systems will let you disable SATA / NVMe ports temporarily.

3) If you do not disconnect drives or disable ports, you could go through the installation and after you select the location to install to and proceed, press SHIFT + F10 to open a command prompt. Run "diskpart", then "select disk x" (where x is the disk number to which you started the installation), then "list partition". If all went well, you will see 4 partitions, something like this:

View attachment 18763

Click to expand...

Hsehestedt: I did check my BIOS (Asus PRIME Z-590P); there are no settings for disabling the NVMe ports; the only reference in the BIOS to the NVMe drives was to run a self-test. That would be a very handy option.

Rob

Winuser said:

I'm one of those people that, if possible, disconnect all other drives when doing a Windows install. I used to dual boot and the one time I forgot the boot partition got moved to drive D. I was thinking about dual boot this desktop, but it has an NVMe drive and I'm not going to chance damaging it. Now instead of dual booting, I use VMs.

Click to expand...

I'm 100% with you on that. In retrospect, I wish I had ordered this machine with conventional SATA SSD drives. I know they don't perform as well but they're a lot easier to deal with if you have to replace one. Like you, if I want to boot another OS, I use a virtual machine (VirtualBox). Makes things so much simpler.

Rob

I've never disconnected other drives nor disabled any in BIOS. I've installed hundreds, if not thousands of Windows OS, starting with 3.1.

NavyLCDR said:

I've never disconnected other drives nor disabled any in BIOS. I've installed hundreds, if not thousands of Windows OS, starting with 3.1.

Click to expand...

Same for me - except for one machine that doesn't cooperate. I never took the time to analyze why, and I don't even recall which partition it was, but one partition got created on a different disk than the disk I selected for Windows installation.

I think it may have to do with the fact that I previously had Windows installed on another disk that was still present in the system.

I may go back and try to recreate that scenario on that system on day, but not now.

NavyLCDR said:

I've never disconnected other drives nor disabled any in BIOS. I've installed hundreds, if not thousands of Windows OS, starting with 3.1.

Click to expand...

I have the same experience, never had a problem like what is being discussed here. But with Windows Vxx, lots.

NavyLCDR said:

I've never disconnected other drives nor disabled any in BIOS. I've installed hundreds, if not thousands of Windows OS, starting with 3.1.

Click to expand...

I think I know why I had the problem of the boot partition moving to the other drive. I was dual booting Windows 10 and Windows 10 Insider. By disconnecting the drives when doing the install each drive had its own boot partition. I used EasyBCD in each OS to point to the boot partitions. If I remember correctly as long as I was booting to the same OS, I had been using the computer would just boot. If I switched the computer would do a restart, then boot into the build I had chosen. For whatever reason when I forgot to disconnect the drive the install recognized the boot loader on the wrong drive.

One has to understand WHY it is considered necessary to disconnect a drive for a clean installation.

Suppose drive 0 has windows 10 installed in uefi mode. That drive will have an EFI partition containing the bcd boot files.

If you now decide to install Windows 11 on drive 1 (even if blank), it will install windows 11 on dtive 1 BUT will add its boot files to the EFI partition on drive 0 creating a dual boot pc

The problem is if you remove drive 0 or wipe it, you will not be able to boot drive q.

If you disconnect drive 0 first, then the installation creates an EFI partition on drive 1 and it will be independent of the drive 0 EFI.

You can then add boot entries to bcds to boot from other drive.

However, if one did not disconnect drive 0 and ended up with a dual boot option, it is a relatively simply exercise to copy EFI from drive 0 to drive 1 using appropriate partition tools.

If drive 0 as just data (no EFI) it is not necessary to disconnect drive 0 to clean install on drive 1 (or vice versa if installing on drive 0 and data is on drive 1}.

However, one needs to understand the risk of doing the above without disconnecting the data drive. You can make human error e.g. wipe data partitions during install, or install to wrong drive.

In extreme cases, crap has been known to happen and sonething goes wrong wiping data drive even though user selected correct drives etc.

So it is safer to disconnect data drives but as always, best plan is to have data (critical data at least) backed up REGARDLESS of disconnecting drive.

Cereberus: On my machine, drive 0 is my data drive and drive 1 is my OS drive so if I'm understanding your very comprehensive post properly, Windows will install properly on drive 1 and not try to modify drive 0. I'm not trying to set up a dual-boot system; I just want to upgrade Windows 10 to Windows 11 on drive 1. And of course, everything will be backed up beforehand with Macrium Reflect.

Rob

Never done that and never had a problem. I've never used a VM either.