Installed 10 pro on M.2 SSD, want to boot from this drive only now.

Glenstr · 21 Nov 2018

MSI X99A Raider MB, Intel i7 6800 3.40 Processor.

I decided to go with 10 pro when I recently installed a Samsung EVO 960 M2 SSD, previous to this I was using 10 Home Edition that is installed on a SATA3 SSD. I did the install from a bootable USB, which has the windows installation program on it.

When the 10 Pro was installed, it put a bootloader on the SSD with 10 Home Edition on it, and when I boot up I get a choice of the 2 windows versions, with it defaulting to the new Pro install.

I recently picked up a 1 TB sata SSD to replace the 500GB SSD that has 10 Home edition on it (as well as the boot loader) and when I changed them out found out my PC would not boot, so I had to swap them out again to start up my PC.

When I look at disk management I see that the M2 SSD has just one partition, unlike the SATA SSD with Home Edition on it which has recovery etc. partitions on it. (see image attached, disk 4 is 10 Pro, disk 2 is Home edition, both are GPT initialized)

I left the PC in dual boot in case I wanted to go back to some programs that I did not install on 10 Pro, but now I've decided I no longer need to boot from Home Edition and just want to replace that disk with the new 1TB SSD.

What do I need to do to the M2 SSD with 10 Pro on it so it will boot?

Thanks in advance..

Installed 10 pro on M.2 SSD, want to boot from this drive only now.-disks.jpg

AddRAM · 22 Nov 2018

It`s because you did not unhook the power cable from the ssd, or any of your other drives.

Now the M.2 doesn`t have the proper files on it to boot on its own.

An expert will come along and post easy instructions to get it booting on its own

If you install Windows on a system with multiple drives, you should always disconnect the power cables from all/any other drives.

You could just disconnect all the other drives and reinstall W10 on the M.2, but I would give it some time for someone to post some very simple instructions, or google it.

A bit amazing that it let you install W10 Pro when you already had W10 Home installed, did you enter a W10 Pro key when you installed 10 ?

NavyLCDR · 22 Nov 2018

Use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free:
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

Shrink your C: drive partition by 100 MB (make sure it is MB and not GB!).
Then copy the 100 MB EFI Partition from Disk 2 to the free space created on the M.2 SSD.
Change the boot order in UEFI settings.
Once you are sure the computer is booting from the M.2 SSD, you can do whatever you want with the SATA SSD.

Glenstr · 22 Nov 2018

AddRAM said:

A bit amazing that it let you install W10 Pro when you already had W10 Home installed, did you enter a W10 Pro key when you installed 10 ?

Yes I had a key, and it let me choose which drive to put it on or replace/upgrade the existing Home Edition installation.

Glenstr · 22 Nov 2018

NavyLCDR said:

Use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free:
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

Shrink your C: drive partition by 100 MB (make sure it is MB and not GB!).
Then copy the 100 MB EFI Partition from Disk 2 to the free space created on the M.2 SSD.
Change the boot order in UEFI settings.
Once you are sure the computer is booting from the M.2 SSD, you can do whatever you want with the SATA SSD.

Thanks - I will check into that free tool. Also assuming I don't need that 450mb recovery partition then too.

Ztruker · 22 Nov 2018

If it was my PC I would move the M2 SSD to SATA port 0, and disconnect all the others then do another clean install, deleting the partition on the M2 and let Windows 10 install partition it as needed.Once done then connect other drives as needed. May take a bit longer but you would end up with a better, more logical setup.

It would end up looking something like this if it's an EFI system:

Installed 10 pro on M.2 SSD, want to boot from this drive only now.-image.png

NavyLCDR · 22 Nov 2018

Ztruker said:

If it was my PC I would move the M2 SSD to SATA port 0, and disconnect all the others then do another clean install, deleting the partition on the M2 and let Windows 10 install partition it as needed.

The M2 is a fixed slot on the motherboard. It cannot be moved to SATA port 0. And the EVO 960 M2 SSD, I am 99% sure, is not even a SATA M2 SSD, it is NVMe. And yes, @Glenstr can do a clean install with just the SSD connected and all the other drives disconnected, and it will set things up cleanly, but he may not want to go through the process of resetting all the settings, re-installing programs/apps, etc., in which case it's a very simple matter to create or copy an EFI system partition on the desired boot drive. I can accomplish that in 2 minutes.

There are advantages to both methods, clean install v. creating/copying an EFI system partition. The advice to remove power or data cables from the remaining drives to test the boot capability of the M2 SSD once it gets an EFI system partition on it is very good advice to make absolutely sure it is capable of being booted from.

@Glenstr, you don't need to copy the recovery partition, only the EFI System Partition - or create a new EFI System Partition on the M2 SSD, once you make room for it by shrinking the OS partition.

Ztruker · 22 Nov 2018

Ah, ok, sorry. Guess it's time for me to read up on M2 SSD. I do vaguely remember a recent thread about someone installing a addon card to get M2 support for a system that did not have it. Thanks for the info.

Edit: For a beginners intro to M.2 SSD read this article: M.2 SSD. I just did and at least now I have a better feel for what a M.2 SSD is compared to a normal SATA SSD.

NavyLCDR · 22 Nov 2018

Ztruker said:

Ah, ok, sorry. Guess it's time for me to read up on M2 SSD. I do vaguely remember a recent thread about someone installing a addon card to get M2 support for a system that did not have it. Thanks for the info.

Edit: For a beginners intro to M.2 SSD read this article: M.2 SSD. I just did and at least now I have a better feel for what a M.2 SSD is compared to a normal SATA SSD.

For the longest time, I drug my feet moving from MBR to GPT. Then it was going from HDD to SSD. I always felt like, "What's the point, I'm happy with what I have?" Now all my computers are running from SSDs and my two newest computers (a laptop and desktop computer) both have NVMe M2 SSDs for the OS and SATA SSDs for data

.

But then again, I also remember the move from pulse dialing to touch tone. There is a display in a local museum here with all the relays set up to show how pulse dialing used to work - it is absolutely fascinating! But now I'm rambling.....

MiniToolSupport · 23 Nov 2018

Win 10 Pro didn't boot after you removed Disk 2 mostly because the system partition of Windows 10 Pro is on disk 2:

So, you can try Glenstr's method to create an FAT32 EFI partition, then connect Disk 4 only, boot computer from Windows 10 installation disk, and run the command bcdboot N:\windows (replace N with the partition letter of the Windows OS partition) in CMD. It will copy boot file from OS partition and create BCD store to the new EFI partition.