System volume is in a separate drive from the boot+main drive C:

Over the course of last few years, many painful reinstalls of operating systems and losing data, I want to understand and fix this problem I have: my NVMe 2 TB disk (disk 3) partition contains the boot and everything I need (data, apps, etc), however, my 500 GB SSD (disk 0) has the system partition in F:

I have a problem if the 500 GB SSD is disconnected, on startup at the boot prompt after choosing Windows as usual, my PC will show error and just not work.

I was wondering if it would be possible to somehow partition some space in disk 3, and copy and paste the System volume in F: there too. That way, my NVMe drive can be completely independent and not need the 500 GB SSD (F:) in order to startup.

I had found this useful thread which helped determined which was my boot and system drive.

Please do help how to do this safely, or if I have gotten any information wrong, I have attached images below



Below showed me disk 3 the boot disk


Below shows me disk 0 volume 0 is the System partition

The best 'safe' way I've found that works for me is to first disconnect any drive except the one intended to be the Boot/System/C: drive, fully install Windows then add back in other drives as needed. It's not a big issue with Notebooks as most don't accept 2 drives. It also helps for the BIOS to correctly identify the connection of the drive, I prefer the only drive be shown as Drive 0 but newer boards have other types of connections available than just SATA. My 'learning' came with a motherboard whose BIOS showed the drive as AHCI/RAID and having 2 drives installed Windows automatically set up RAID 0 and later removal of a drive broke the boot process, forced reinstalling with only one drive connected.

Agree. ALWAYS disconnect all drives except the one you are installing Windows on if you want the end result to be correct.