New drive for OS advice (how to be safe)

Method · 2025-04-06T05:47:35-0400

Hi

At Christmas you guys/gals were ultra helpful in getting me a clean install of W11 up and running on a 1Tb corsair drive purely for OS and then I had a seperate 4Tb Samsung pro drive for data and disk images.

I'm not happy with the performance of my OS drive. Last night I moved my Steam library from data drive to os drive. It took 10 mins. I then moved it back and it took 2 mins. Basically the os drive has a slower read speed than my data drives write speed. And it's pants.

So I bought a 2TB Samsung pro last night which will be my new OS drive (itnactually has a slightly better performance profile than my 4tb drive which i love) and the 1Tb Corsair will be my disk image drive (and nothing else).

Q1: how best to get a clean install onto the 2tb drive?
Q2: how do I do this safely?

Thanks in advance

bobkn · 2025-04-06T11:11:54-0400

Not sure what you're asking.

If you did a clean install on a 1TB drive a few months ago, you'd do the same thing on the new 2TB drive. Install the 2TB drive. Boot the PC from a USB Windows installation drive. Let the installer automatically create partitions on the 2TB drive, and format it. SImple.

If you're paranoid, you disconnect the 4TB drive during the install so that no system files would be placed on it. (As far as I know, that's unnecessary, as long as the 4TB drive was never used as a boot drive.)

You may be disappointed in the OS drive upgrade. The speed may have less to do with the 1TB drive than with the vagaries of Windows file copying.

Method · 2025-04-06T11:24:03-0400

bobkn said:
If you're paranoid, you disconnect the 4TB drive during the install so that no system files would be placed on it. (As far as I know, that's unnecessary, as long as the 4TB drive was never used as a boot drive.)

I think this is what I was asking (sort of).

Taking this further, I think you are saying I should disconnect both the 4Tb Data drive and the current 1Tb OS drive, so that the system files are forced on to the 2Tb OS drive.

The other bit I was asking (without really asking) is once the 2Tb drive is up and running as a boot drive, and I then reconnect the 1Tb boot drive I currently have - how will Windows know which drive to boot from? Presumably I do this via BIOS?

badrobot · 2025-04-06T12:02:22-0400

disconnect all other drives when clean installing an OS so you won't have an issue with boot manager.

bobkn · 2025-04-06T13:02:46-0400

Method said:
I think this is what I was asking (sort of).

Taking this further, I think you are saying I should disconnect both the 4Tb Data drive and the current 1Tb OS drive, so that the system files are forced on to the 2Tb OS drive.

The other bit I was asking (without really asking) is once the 2Tb drive is up and running as a boot drive, and I then reconnect the 1Tb boot drive I currently have - how will Windows know which drive to boot from? Presumably I do this via BIOS?

I've never had two bootable drives connected simultaneously. I believe that some do that as a means to have two different OSes present.

The boot order would be set in the BIOS. The boot device can also be chosen using a hotkey at boot time.

SIW2 · 2025-04-06T13:45:36-0400

There are several ways to do it. One way is to create the bcd entries for all windows os in each bcd store.

a simple example :

the bcd store on disk0 could contain entries for both the os on disk0 and the os on disk1.

And the bcd store on disk1 could contain entries for both the the os on disk1 and the os on disk0.

[ Note the bcd entry does not reference those disk numbers, it references the disk and partition guids. It displays those to the user as either a letter or a device path symbolic link. ]

If the current os displays as C and the other os on the other disk displays as E it can be added to the current bcd store

bcdboot e:\windows

bcdboot command will acept either letters or device path e.g. \Device\HarddiskVolume5

bobkn · 2025-04-06T14:16:11-0400

SIW2 said:
There are several ways to do it. One way is to create the bcd entries for all windows os in each bcd store.

a simple example :

the bcd store on disk0 could contain entries for both the os on disk0 and the os on disk1.

And the bcd store on disk1 could contain entries for both the the os on disk1 and the os on disk0.

[ Note the bcd entry does not reference those disk numbers, it references the disk and partition guids. It displays those to the user as either a letter or a device path symbolic link. ]

If the current os displays as C and the other os on the other disk displays as E it can be added to the current bcd store

bcdboot e:\windows

bcdboot command will acept either letters or device path e.g. \Device\HarddiskVolume5

Good heavens!

Is this necessary?

SIW2 · 2025-04-06T14:25:21-0400

It is not necessary. If you prefer they can be selected in bios each time.

If you do it as outlined in my previous post then the os can be selected using windows boot menu instead of bios.

It is not difficult. Just one straightforward bcdboot command

Winuser · 2025-04-06T14:53:12-0400

I take the easy way out and use EasyBCD to setup my boot menus. Add the drive with the other OS, give it a name then click save.

bobkn · 2025-04-06T15:00:22-0400

SIW2 said:
It is not necessary. If you prefer they can be selected in bios each time.

If you do it as outlined in my previous post then the os can be selected using windows boot menu instead of bios.

It is not difficult. Just one straightforward bcdboot command

Difficult, no.

Familiar to me, also no.

(I haven't dual booted since I did it with Win 98 and NT 4.)

pseymour · 2025-04-06T15:08:07-0400

bobkn said:
(I haven't dual booted since I did it with Win 98 and NT 4.)

Back in the ol' boot.ini days :)

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