[SOLVED] Dual Boot Two Windows 10 - Work/Personal

[compl3xity]

Hi - I hope someone can tell me the proper way to do this as there are multiple answers online.

I have a work pc Windows 10 install with no admin rights, I am trying to install Windows 10 on my own personal SSD drive and keep them as separate as possible. It would be great to restrict access from one drive to the other drive, almost like unplugging the one that is not used. (Would this work as a last resort?)
There are two ways to do this, from what I have read...

1. Unplug work Win10 drive, plug in personal drive and install Win10 with USB install tool. After everything is set up on personal second drive, plug main work drive in too, and select which drive to boot from in BIOS.
2. Keep work drive plugged in, plug in personal drive, install Win10 with USB install tool on personal drive. This apparently sets up dual-boot and you can select which OS to boot from in a Windows looking menu (which will show two bootable Windows 10 OS)

I have done the first option, which works but now I am running into issues with file corruption, drive errors, and other strange things - something is definitely not working properly. Apparently, there is an issue with Fast startup from Windows 10 that can corrupt files when dual booting, but I cannot disable Fast startup as I don't have admin rights on my work PC.

This is a lot more difficult due to the admin rights I am about to give up with it - is there anything else I can try? The only option I can think of is unplugging the drive which is not used and swapping them out when it needs to be used, although one is an M.2 SSD so it will be annoying. Would this cause any file corruption too due to Fast startup?

 

[Colif]

Realistically you shouldn't be using a PC you don't own, that is the main problem here.

And fast startup is still going to be a problem since you can't turn it off. That will cause issues on the work install as its a power setting. With fast start-up on the pc doesn't actually shutdown when you turn it off, it thinks its going into a sleep state and saves some of it to the hiberfile and other parts to ram. So the hdd part might survive being unplugged but whatever it puts in ram gets lost.

as s ide note: fast startup on an NVME makes no sense. Its only real benefit is to speed up hdd and nvme are too fast to notice a difference.

Boot manager won't help, win 10 isn't designed to dual boot with itself. the problems he has happen before windows boots, and since he installed with only 1 drive in at a time, the boot manager can't see the other install. That is ideal for win 7/10 issues though.

 

[compl3xity]

Realistically you shouldn't be using a PC you don't own, that is the main problem here.

And fast startup is still going to be a problem since you can't turn it off. That will cause issues on the work install as its a power setting. With fast start-up on the pc doesn't actually shutdown when you turn it off, it thinks its going into a sleep state and saves some of it to the hiberfile and other parts to ram. So the hdd part might survive being unplugged but whatever it puts in ram gets lost.

as s ide note: fast startup on an NVME makes no sense. Its only real benefit is to speed up hdd and nvme are too fast to notice a difference.

Boot manager won't help, win 10 isn't designed to dual boot with itself. the problems he has happen before windows boots, and since he installed with only 1 drive in at a time, the boot manager can't see the other install. That is ideal for win 7/10 issues though.

Thanks for the replies, and yeah Colif, that's true, however I own all the hardware apart from the work drive that I have been given... long story.

I know Fast startup is more of a headache really, I think this is what has caused the errors.
If I can disable Fast startup on both drives, do you think I can just continue booting from BIOS with two drives with no more corruption issues? Would it be better to unplug the drive which is not in use and swap them out to be extra safe? (After turning off Fast startup)

 

[Colif]

if both installs don't touch each other I don't think you would need to remove the drives each time, thats just added points of failure. thing is, windows thinks it owns all the drives in a system so stopping one from putting something on other is difficult. I didn't tell Windows it could use my 3tb hdd as a location for its ESD files tied to version updates and yet it did. 7gb of iso files there so far.

If you own everything else, can't you ask the tech people at your work to turn fast startup off?