Dual Boot to 2 Separate SSD using Win 10

Question

Hi all,
wanting to know if i should be expecting any problems in setting this up and ongoing. one drive will have office applications for work, the other separate SSD will have games. from my digging around the only precautions that needs to be observed is to make sure the first SSD is unplugged while installing Windows onto the second SSD.

When i first bought the computer the attendant in the shop used a windows boot menu, a nice blue screen, so the boot record for the second drive was actually on the first drive, (see picture above) now that iam upgrading the second drive to a larger size to accommodate larger games, the system is having a hernia, chkdsk runs on most boot ups and deletes files all over the place. i have replaced the upgraded second drive with the original drive, and all problems have ceased. Would deleting the additional boot record fix the problem, if so, which is the book record to delete? Or do you think there is no way out of this and i will have to reinstall windows on the first drive?, if that is the case, then the first question in this post is focus.

TIA

Answer 1

Then there is the problem if one drive develops a fault, will that create problems for the other? perhaps the only way is to do 2 new windows installs, but i cant do that every time i change 1 drive

I'm not sure why you would keep having disk failures. Only the disk manufacturer may know the answer to that one. A better option may be to use a hardware mirror (raid 1) where you have a fault tolerant set. One or the other disks fails and the OS lives on, you replace the failed disk and the controller rebuilds the array back to fault tolerance.

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Answer 2

ahh, i think i know now where we have come unstuck, i want to select the boot drive using the UEFI boot option. ie, 2 completely separate boot records, completely independent of each other. doing it the above way will cause problems if i need to install a new drive - these are the problems i experience as outlined in my initial post.
Can i use the UEFI option and have no other problems?

Answer 3

Ok, sounds like you may be using the mobo's bios boot options to make selections. Seems a cumbersome method but if it is working for you then so be it. The method I mentioned above may be easier to manage dualboot.

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Answer 4

Hi Patrick
i agree that it is a bit more cumbersome, but i have experienced massive problems when it came time to replace a drive, the problems have been going on for ages and have caused me major distress, at this stage i just want something simple that works
So the last question would be, do you invisage any possible problems if i use the mobo bios boot options to select drive?

by the way, under the old system the boot screen as here would appear

Answer 5

do you invisage any possible problems if i use the mobo bios boot options to select drive?

Probably not but who really knows? This is not a normal method that anyone routinely uses. You might also consider standing them up virtually instead of do this disk swap method.

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