Solved New M2 NVMe: How do I make it Disk 0?

New disk arrives tomorrow. Restoring OS (C:\) and D:\ drive (programs, mostly) from current Disk 0 to new M2. I will remove current Disk 0 from case, and set BIOS to boot from M2. What do I have to do to make M2 my new Disk 0? Anything?
(There's a second disk in there now, and it stays. It's my local storage disk. From there backups go to an external for safekeeping.)

You don't need to make it disk 0. As an example, Windows enumerates my M.2 NVMe SSD as disk 4 and happily boots from it.

If you're swapping M.2 for M.2 then it 'should' become Disk 0 automatically, but as hsehestedt said, as far as Windows, it doesn't care and should boot/run from it fine no matter what Disk number it's assigned.

Archigos said:

If you're swapping M.2 for M.2 then it 'should' become Disk 0 automatically, but as hsehestedt said, as far as Windows, it doesn't care and should boot/run from it fine no matter what Disk number it's assigned.

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But I'm swapping M2 PCIe for SATA SSD, and I thought I might have to do something extra to get the new M2 recognized as primary disk.

I started to say earlier that it's been so long that I've forgotten how to do all of this, but the last time I did this there were two SSDs involved, and the time before that, there was a new SSD and an old HDD, so I'm a little worried about getting the PCIe / SATA swap right. I've NEVER done this before.

hsehestedt said:

You don't need to make it disk 0. As an example, Windows enumerates my M.2 NVMe SSD as disk 4 and happily boots from it.

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Thanks. I wasn't confident that would work.

The disk numbering is just the order the disks are recognized by the system at bootup. They won't make any difference to the access of each disk.

My setup initially was an nvme optane drive which was drive 0. I added a new nvme drive for data and that was drive 1.

For various reasons, the optane drive was giving me issues, so I decided to swap out the optane drive with another non optane NVME I had, cloning OS to new drive.

All went perfectly well but when I looked in disk manager, I discovered data drive was now drive 0 and OS drive was drive 1 - that did surprise me - weird! I guess drive 0 and drive 1 is now more dynamic that just which slot you use.

From a booting point of view, no issues at all but I have a number of dism related batch files expecting to see C drive on drive 0 and it would have been a PITA to update all my batch files.

So, I physically swapped over the drives and C drive is 0, Data drive is 1, and everything is as I wanted it.

However, I do not know how you could do that if one drive was conventional Sata SSD and other NVME - I am not sure it is even possible.

In the end, it is not really that important as Windows does not care - the days when boot drive had to be zero died out many years ago.

cereberus said:

However, I do not know how you could do that if one drive was conventional Sata SSD and other NVME - I am not sure it is even possible.

In the end, it is not really that important as Windows does not care - the days when boot drive had to be zero died out many years ago.

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Yeah, I'm not at all sure anything can be done physically. Thanks for the words and the encouragement.

I've wondered as well. My PC came from Dell with one M.2 drive. It was assigned disk 0. When I added another disk for storage, it was assigned disk 0 and the m.2 had changed to 1.

I have an NVME and a SATA SSD in my computer. The UEFI (and Task Manager) shows the SSD as Disk 0 and the NVME as Disk 1.
I have Windows installed on both, and use the UEFI boot menu to select a drive when I want to change the OS.
However, if I do not use the UEFI boot menu, the system automatically boots from the UEFI drive (drive 1)
Shouldn't it automatically boot drive 0?

My SATA SSD's are disks 0,1,2
My NVMe's are disks 3,4,5
Disk 5 is my boot drive., Windows 11
Disk 1 is Windows 10

I can boot to either one via my boot menu

Subscriber43 said:

I have Windows installed on both, and use the UEFI boot menu to select a drive when I want to change the OS. ...
Shouldn't it automatically boot drive 0?

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Depends on your settings in the BIOS if both disks have an OS on them.

It has been my observation that drives on the SATA controller are recognized first, and drives on the PCIe bus are recognized afterward.
Just an observation of a few systems, not a declaration or anything.
It is probably a legacy configuration thing. Easier to go along than to try and rewrite the whole thing.