[SOLVED] Added a second M2 drive and can't get into Windows

[Modestvolta]

I've been using a SATA M.2 SSD (860 EVO) for my boot/OS drive (Windows 10). I recently bought a new NVME M.2 SSD (WD Black SN750). For what it's worth, my plan is to clone the SATA drive to the NVME drive and then use the SATA drive for storage. I have a X299 Raider motherboard. I don't really feel like reinstalling Windows, programs, etc.

When I install the NVME drive, I moved the SATA drive to my M2 slot behind my GPU, which is a pain to uninstall, so I'd like to avoid having to move that again. After installing the NVME drive, I started my computer, and Windows went into repair mode. It eventually said it couldn't do anything to repair the Windows installation. My mouse and keyboard were non-functional, so I had to do a hard power down.

I pulled the NVME drive and the PC started up fine. No issues. When I put the NVME drive back in, the same thing happened as above. I checked my boot order, and my SATA drive is set as my boot drive, but Windows still wants to repair itself and won't respond to mouse/keyboard (mouse and keyboard work fine when in BIOS).

Any ideas how to get this working with two M2 drives? Ideally a solution that doesn't involve installing Windows to the NVME drive first or even temporarily removing the SATA drive. Any other details I can provide?

Thanks!

 

[Ralston18]

Check the motherboard's User Guide/Manual.

M.2 installs can preempt SATA ports.

Likely a SATA port "conflict".

 

[USAFRet]

From the specs:
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/X299-RAIDER/Specification
"M.2 slots and SATA ports share the same bandwidth. Please refer to user manual for U.2, M.2 & SATA combination table. "

Look in your user manual.
Likely you just have to move the SATA drive connection do a different port on the motherboard.

 

[Modestvolta]

Thanks for the responses - after checking out the manual, I'm fairly confident I have my SATA ports properly set up/used. I think I have a much bigger issue that's going to take a lot more troubleshooting that I probably don't have time for now, but any pointers would be appreciated.

When I unplugged everything except for my main boot drive, Windows wouldn't start at all - I don't remember the exact wording, but something about Windows not being installed to the boot device. After unplugging in various hard drives (which I normally use for storage), I got a message that Windows ran into an issue, and that I should use my Windows 10 installation disc to repair. (I don't have a Windows 10 installation disc because I did the free upgrade from Windows 7; after upgrading to Windows 10, I did a fresh install of Windows 10 using a USB drive, so maybe I can use that to troubleshoot...)

The good news is that after plugging back in all of my old storage drives, Windows works normally again. The bad news is that this doesn't make any sense to me, and I'm out of luck when it comes to upgrading my hard drive for now until I can get that sorted out. Any ideas? Time to make a new question in another part of the forum?

Thanks again!

 

[USAFRet]

With the 'fresh install' of Win 10, did you have more than one drive connected?
This often (usually) results in the small boot partition residing on 'the other drive'. Remove that, and no boot for you.

Yes, even if you designate a particular drive as where to install the OS to, that boot partition ends up elsewhere.

 

[Modestvolta]

With the 'fresh install' of Win 10, did you have more than one drive connected?
This often (usually) results in the small boot partition residing on 'the other drive'. Remove that, and no boot for you.

Yes, even if you designate a particular drive as where to install the OS to, that boot partition ends up elsewhere.

Ugh, I probably installed windows with multiple drives connected. Am I looking at trying to repair windows with just my main drive connected (or, worst case, a fresh windows install)? Or is there a way to tell windows where my boot partition should be?

Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

Possibly this:

(assuming your desired OS drive is Disk 1)

diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
list partition
select partition 3
shrink desired=500
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
active
assign letter=H
exit
bcdboot c:\windows /s H:

(after, remove the H drive letter from that little partition)

 

[Modestvolta]

Possibly this:

(assuming your desired OS drive is Disk 1)

diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
list partition
select partition 3
shrink desired=500
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
active
assign letter=H
exit
bcdboot c:\windows /s H:

(after, remove the H drive letter from that little partition)

I’ll give it a shot in a little bit (after I locally back up some stuff). Thanks!

 

[Modestvolta]

Possibly this:

(assuming your desired OS drive is Disk 1)

diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
list partition
select partition 3
shrink desired=500
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
active
assign letter=H
exit
bcdboot c:\windows /s H:

(after, remove the H drive letter from that little partition)

It took a while for me to make time to mess with my PC again, but I got it working. This wasn't quite the solution, but got me going in the right direction. In case it helps anyone in the future, what I did was make a Windows USB boot drive, and restarted my PC. I then chose Repair Windows, and then advanced troubleshooting, and followed the steps in post 2 here: https://www.tenforums.com/installation-upgrade/52837-moving-recreating-efi-partition.html

Thank you!