Best way to install and run win10 on a fresh SSD to avoid conflicts with OS (win7/10) on my other connected HDDs?

[jayf95]

Right now I have 3 OS' on 3 different drives.

I have win7 (which I never use) on an old 1TB harddrive that is being used for storage.

On a Sandisk 120gb SSD, I have Win10 installed, and this is the main OS I use. When I upgraded from 8.1, this is the drive I installed it onto.

However the Sandisk OS (win10) is rather cluttered, and I need to stop a few processes to ensure the best gaming performance.

So I decided to buy another SSD (ADATA) and have a fresh win10 installation on it. After installing the ADATA SSD, I partitioned it into OS into 2 volumes (1 for OS, the other for game installations)

I want to use the Sandisk OS for everyday use, and then switch to the ADATA solely for gaming. When im using the ADATA drive, I'd like the win7 drive disconnected.

I installed Win10 on the ADATA drive off a USB drive. However, while I remembered to unplug the Sandisk SSD, I forgot about the Win7 drive. For the first little while it worked fine. I think what messed it up was I disconnected the win7 drive then tried booting into the ADATA drive. I now get start up repair cycles/boot errors when I try to switch to the ADATA OS from the Sandisk OS. I have some more background info if you want, but its already getting a bit long.


Heres what I want the final setup to look like:
Upon rebooting the system, I want to be able to choose between the ADATA OS and the Sandisk OS.

When Im using the Sandisk OS, Id like the win7 drive to be connected (for accessing the stored files), but when using the ADATA OS, I want the win7 drive disconnected.

How can reinstall win10 on the ADATA drive (in the designated partition) without any boot conflicts with the other drives/ OS?

Should I disconnect all other drives when reinstalling windows on the ADATA drive? How can I change the bios settings to be able to do what I mentioned above?

Is is worthwhile updating my BIOS? how safe is it to do that?

Thanks for your help!

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, @jayf95!

There's one thing I don't understand, why do you need so many drives containing the same OS? From what I understand you have Windows 7 onto the secondary 1 TB HDD which you don't use. Then why not format it and use it solely as a storage drive?
I also didn't quite get why you need Windows 10 on both SSDs? If you want to clean install the Win 10 version onto the new SSD, then unplug all other secondary SSDs & HDDs from the system. This is how you will avoid any potential OS confusion.
However, I'd strongly recommend you perform full backup of your system somewhere off-site before you tamper with the storage configuration. Please, consider formatting the system partitions and deleting the operating systems that you do not use. There's no point in having Windows 10 on both SSDs really, so maybe check which one performs better and format the other one. I believe you will get a much better performance if you have games installed on SSD and the OS running from the other.

Hope this helps. Keep me posted if you have more questions!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[RealBeast]

I agree fully with SuperSoph_WD's thoughts on your overly complex setup.

But if you are really insistent on going that way, the simplest thing that I can think of is to buy an IcyDock MB-971SP-B and swap drives; it will take both a 2.5 and 3.5 inch, so both an SSD and HDD concurrently, its connections are direct to the SATA onboard ports so it does not impede performance. I use them on a number of machines to hot plug drives as needed for backup purposes, but it would work for your idea. Newegg has them.

I do think that it is overkill, however, and would simply clean up and reorganize what you have to do all the things that you need with a single W10 install and smart program and storage management.