How to install Windows 11 on a Work SSD and a Personal SSD?

On this new system last night I installed the first Personal drive. Got everything set up and just for the heck of it, I tried installing Windows on the second drive with the first one still on the motherboard. Unlike the previous system, it went ahead and did it but it set up the windows boot menu. I guess that's okay but then when I removed the Work drive the original install will no longer boot and says there's errors and you can't even use the Windows tool to repair it. You just can't boot into windows anymore until you put the newer second Work drive back in. It seems really odd to break the original Windows install by simply removing the second drive with the second install. So either drive goes bad, you can’t boot into the remaining one. ??? It put the boot info on the second drive?

Over the years, setting up a dual boot Window system has gotten more and more complicated. Just installing Windows is now overly complicated. You need to jump through hoops and know some tricks just to install windows without an MS account or internet access. Shift + 10, oobe/ bypassnro

I'm trying to do a clean Windows 11 install for the first time with a Work drive and a Personal drive on a new build. In years past, I would simply unplug the first drive that had been installed and configured while installing and configuring the second. Then I would use the BIOS to boot the drive I wanted. I have tried using the Windows built-in boot menu but it always seems to mess things up.

On my previous build with SSD drives I couldn't even install Windows on the second drive with them both being in the system. It would see the new second drive and it would try to set up a partition and then install files and would fail until took everything apart and removed the first drive.

This is complicated by the fact that I haven't seen any bios manufacturer give you a simple way to disable a motherboard SSD for troubleshooting. So you have to pull apart the motherboard, heat, sinks and whatnot, possibly remove your video card to take out an SSD so that you can install windows on one without it finding and hosing the other.

Even if I go through the trouble of having one SSD on the motherboard at a time and getting Windows installed, are they going to mess with each other?

I had my last windows 10 set up this way and it seemed to be fine. But I went through the trouble of having only one drive on the system until Windows was installed and configured.

It is always a best practice to remove all other drives when installing a second OS on a separate drive. Unless you plan to permanently have a dual boot system.

That is what I've normally done in the past but the era motherboard mounted SSDs makes it more painful.

Now I'm installing again as I don't know of a way to decuple the two SSDs.

When Installing Windows xx, and I have multiple HD's installed in the case,
I remember an old RailRoad saying, "Never the trains shall meet!".
So I just make sure that the HD I want Windows installed on is the only HD that the Windows installer can see, or the chance of a screw up is very likely.

That little preference is based on a miscomboble I had with a computer about 40 years ago, and I've not forgotten the lesson I learned that day.
The second HD in that case has some good stuff on it, and it got wiped out!

Another old saying that I like, is "Measure twice, cut once". What that means to me is check twice, that the HD I'm going to install Windows to is the ONLY one connected to the motherboard.

Dual boot to me, means that there are two or more HD's in my PC case that could boot up to Windows. It just depends on which one I have currently plugged in.

Best way for me at least I go to unplug abs and plug 1 in whichever SSD I want in whatever OS I want on it

I have 6 OSs installed on the Win10 Main Rig. (attached).
All were installed w/o unplugging any of the others.
I used EasyBCD 2.3 to sort-out the boot menu & rename, etc the entries.
I used EBCD 2.3 on the Win11 laptop to add & sort-out another Win11 for MS Testing also w/o any problems.



Edit: This worked for but there are no guarantees it work for everyone.

SmokeMe said:

I have 6 OSs installed on the Win10 Main Rig. (attached).
All were installed w/o unplugging any of the others.
I used EasyBCD 2.3 to sort-out the boot menu & rename, etc the entries.
I used EBCD 2.3 on the Win11 laptop to add & sort-out another Win11 for MS Testing also w/o any problems.

https://neosmart.net/forums/threads/easybcd-2-4-soft-release.16563/

View attachment 59129

Edit: This worked for but there are no guarantees it work for everyone.

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That is exactly why you need to fix the boot menu. If you just unplugged the other drives. It will be easier.

If you really want to make sure that everything gets installed on one SSD without having to take the bottom off a laptop computer and remove one of the NVMe SSDs without dropping that tiny little screw into an impossible to retrieve place - you can manually create the partitions for Windows install using diskpart, apply the Windows image to the SSD using DISM, and put the boot files into the EFI system partition with bcdboot command. This can all be done from within Windows running on the other SSD, or from a standard Windows 10/11 installation USB flash drive.

I have never physically disconnected any disks to install Windows in multi-disk systems. It takes less time and effort to just type in the commands.

Try booting into working windows which boots normally to desktop. Open file explorer and note the drive letter of 2nd disk. Suppose it is E: from which windows is not booting.Then run CMD as administrator. At command prompt type as follow:-
c:\windows\system32>bcdboot E:\windows
Boot files successfully created. Now reboot the system and you will see missing operating system added to main boot menu.
Try this command for other hard disk attached having Operating System Windows 10, 11 so on.

NavyLCDR said:

If you really want to make sure that everything gets installed on one SSD without having to take the bottom off a laptop computer and remove one of the NVMe SSDs without dropping that tiny little screw into an impossible to retrieve place - you can manually create the partitions for Windows install using diskpart, apply the Windows image to the SSD using DISM, and put the boot files into the EFI system partition with bcdboot command. This can all be done from within Windows running on the other SSD, or from a standard Windows 10/11 installation USB flash drive.

I have never physically disconnected any disks to install Windows in multi-disk systems. It takes less time and effort to just type in the commands.

Click to expand...

100% agree
Some of the advice given from "The other side of the planet" isn't always that great in spite of the huge number of off shored I.T stuff. Fortunately they don't speak Icelandic so we on the whole are spared that misery of dealing with those hideous call centres etc. One advantage at least (perhaps the only one) of not having English as your native language even though most of us probably speak it better than 80% of people in London, NYC, LA and most parts of Texas.

Cheers
jimbo

Tanquen said:

. So you have to pull apart the motherboard, heat, sinks and whatnot, possibly remove your video card to take out an SSD so that you can install windows on one without it finding and hosing the other.

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Yeah, this has always been my least favorite thing with NVMe drives. In years past, it was so easy to just pop off the side of the case and move the data cable and power cable from drive A to drive B and have a whole different system. Obviously, you can elect to not use NVMe drives, and instead use regular SATA SSD's and get this same functionality back, but then you give up the extra performance of the NVMe as well as the cleanliness from not having to have data and power cables going to your drive.

Have you considered native booting from a .vhdx file? We have several posts and a tutorial on this forum about it. I've been running Windows 11 on my primary desktop (which still has Windows 10), as a .vhdx file and it's worked out great. Just a suggestion.

pparks1 said:

Have you considered native booting from a .vhdx file?

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You can do that from the BIOS? I've have to read up on how that works. Any down sides?

Tanquen said:

You can do that from the BIOS? I've have to read up on how that works. Any down sides?

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You don't have to do anything in the BIOS at all. Here are the steps

mkdir D:\win11-vhdx

Open Disk Management
Action > Create VHD, ensure you do a VHDX file;. I put mine in D:\win11-vhdx
I created a 100GB fixed disk
Right click on this new disk and initialize as GPT, and give it a drive letter ( I used drive F)

Mount Windows 11 iso (I used drive g)
Open cmd as admin
G:
cd sources
dism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:G:\sources\install.wim (Get index of version you wish to install, I'm installing Windows 11 Pro which is index 6)
dism /Apply-Image /ImageFile:G:\sources\install.wim /index:6 /ApplyDir:F:\

Make a boot entry for Windows
bcdboot F:\Windows /d (the /d says to leave your current default boot entry intact, so it will still boot to the native windows install on your machine)




Only real downside is that the .vhdx file is going to use X amount of drive space on your system. In my case, it was 100GB. Other than that, it works great.

If you decide you no longer want it, just delete the boot entry and then delete the .vhdx file.

Tanquen said:

You can do that from the BIOS? I've have to read up on how that works. Any down sides?

Click to expand...

You can make it so you have to select it in BIOS. The way that you would do that would be to create a separate EFI System Partition which contained a BCD that would boot the VHDX virtual disk. Then you would go into BIOS each time with the function key that presented the boot override menu and you would then select the EFI System Partition for the VHDX file. To me that just overcomplicates things way to much!

On this new system last night I installed the first Personal drive. Got everything set up and just for the heck of it, I tried installing Windows on the second drive with the first one still on the motherboard.

There's your mistake. Boot files for second drive were added to bcd on first drive (work ssd) and then when you remove it, you have no boot files for second ssd.


This is not new - been like it for many years and vetsions of windows.

What you have to do is

• remove work ssd
• install windows on new ssd
• option create boot entry on work ssd or home ssd for other drive.

Alternatively select which drive to boot from bios.

I disagree with removing or unplugging drives, especially when they are M.2 drives or buried under the bottom cover of a laptop. There are lots of easy software solutions to make boot files on any drive. I can do it with software faster than you can take a cover off a computer and unplug a drive cable.

cereberus said:

On this new system last night I installed the first Personal drive. Got everything set up and just for the heck of it, I tried installing Windows on the second drive with the first one still on the motherboard.

There's your mistake. Boot files for second drive were added to bcd on first drive (work ssd) and then when you remove it, you have no boot files for second ssd.


This is not new - been like it for many years and vetsions of windows.

What you have to do is

• remove work ssd
• install windows on new ssd
• option create boot entry on work ssd or home ssd for other drive.

Alternatively select which drive to boot from bios.

Click to expand...

Yes, I've experienced that in the past. It's not terribly straightforward as I would think during installation when I choose a drive to install the OS on it should install it there, not search the entire system for any other drive that already has an OS installed on it and install stuff there or otherwise mess with that device/drive. But being aware of those issues, I normally always would disconnect other devices first. But I said it's a pain in the booty with SSDs. There might even be a way to tell the installation to not do that, but I'd always just unplugged the other drives.

NavyLCDR said:

I disagree with removing or unplugging drives, especially when they are M.2 drives or buried under the bottom cover of a laptop. There are lots of easy software solutions to make boot files on any drive. I can do it with software faster than you can take a cover off a computer and unplug a drive cable.

Click to expand...

Agreed, but on older systems I could get the side off and unplug the cable pretty quick and just get stuff done. Not something I was doing every day. I used to have a lot of drives and I had gotten a 5 and 1/4 bay insert with six or so SATA power buttons and I could toggle power on and off to devices. But again you can't do that with SSDs. I really wish bios developers would just add the simple ability to disable all on board devices, sound cards, network cards, iGPU, SATA controllers and or individual SSDs or SATA drives, if it all possible it would make things a lot nicer for troubleshooting etc. But apparently that's a lot to ask in the age of $600 or even $1200 motherboards.