Question How to fix BIOS not detecting my two drives ?

[jscardino]

I have 3 drives. A 500gb nvme SSD, 1tb Samsung SSD , and a 2tb hard drive. I was previously on windows 10 downloaded on my 500gb SSD. I was trying to install windows 11 on my new Samsung SSD that I put in my pc. I booted up my flash drive and installed windows to the new SSD. Note that I still have a windows 10 on my 500gb SSD. Once Windows 11 booted up on my desktop all my files were gone but my drives were still visible on file explorer and all of the files were there. In bios, my 500gb SSD and 2tb hard drive isn't detected on boot up but my 1tb Samsung SSD is. Windows seemingly ignored me choosing my Samsung SSD to install windows and installed it on my hard drive, as I can see it is the new C drive that says its boots windows 11 (which doesn't even make sense because my bios doesn't even detect my hard drive). Is there any way I can get my bios to detect my 2 drives or did the windows 11 installation process brick both of them?


Basically to sum up my questions briefly:
How can I get my bios to see my 2 drives?
How can I delete windows 10 on my 500gb SSD and move windows 11 from my hard drive to my samsung SSD?
Is there any way to do the above questions while maintaining all of my files and personal data?

 

[KingLoki]

When you install windows with other hdd's connected, it messes with creating the main boot drive process during installation. You should remove all hard drives, then install windows to your main windows drive of your choice.
Can you post a screenshot of your pc's drives as shown in disk management.??

 

[jscardino]

Yeah, I definitely learned my lesson... I'm having difficulty uploading the image so I put it on imgur

https://imgur.com/kt4oefX

View: https://imgur.com/kt4oefX


also shows in file explorer my drives that have plenty of data so hopefully I can get things back to normal just on windows 11

https://imgur.com/a/pmUPU9n

View: https://imgur.com/a/pmUPU9n

 

[SkyNetRising]

How can I get my bios to see my 2 drives?

By looking in proper BIOS sections.
Clearly all your drives are being detected.
Sata drives and nvme drives will be shown in different sections.

How can I delete windows 10 on my 500gb SSD and move windows 11 from my hard drive to my samsung SSD?
Is there any way to do the above questions while maintaining all of my files and personal data?
hopefully I can get things back to normal just on windows 11

1. I'd suggest you remove bitlocker from all your drives. You'll avoid a lot of problems by doing that.
2. If you delete windows from 500GB drive, all your data on the drive will be lost.

So copy important data to some other drive before doing this.​

To delete windows on 500GB SSD,​

delete 465GB F: partition and 505MB recovery partition on Disk 1 and​

create a single large partition, format it and assign a drive letter.​

3. You can NOT move windows from 2TB drive to 1TB drive. There is not enough space available on 1TB drive.

Used space on 2TB drive is 1060GB. You have only 931GB available on 1TB drive.​

You have two options:​

Option #1​

Shuffle data around and move away from 2TB drive, so used space on it is 850GB or less.​

Delete E: partition from 1TB disk.​

Then you can clone OS partition from 2TB drive to 1TB drive.​

Bootloader will need to be fixed after this. Assuming here new cloned partition is with drive letter E: , then execute from elevated command prompt.​

bcdboot E:\windows /f UEFI​

Resulting message should be "Boot files created successfully".​

Note - first boot from cloned drive has to be done with old drive (2TB drive) physically disconnected.​

This step is not optional or you'll have to redo cloning.​

Option #2​

Delete E: partition from 1TB disk.​

Shutdown and disconnect 2TB disk and 500GB disk.​

And do clean install of windows 11 on 1TB disk.​

 

[jscardino]

By looking in proper BIOS sections.
Clearly all your drives are being detected.
Sata drives and nvme drives will be shown in different sections.

1. I'd suggest you remove bitlocker from all your drives. You'll avoid a lot of problems by doing that.
2. If you delete windows from 500GB drive, all your data on the drive will be lost.

So copy important data to some other drive before doing this.​

To delete windows on 500GB SSD,​

delete 465GB F: partition and 505MB recovery partition on Disk 1 and​

create a single large partition, format it and assign a drive letter.​

3. You can NOT move windows from 2TB drive to 1TB drive. There is not enough space available on 1TB drive.

Used space on 2TB drive is 1060GB. You have only 931GB available on 1TB drive.​

You have two options:​

Option #1​

Shuffle data around and move away from 2TB drive, so used space on it is 850GB or less.​

Delete E: partition from 1TB disk.​

Then you can clone OS partition from 2TB drive to 1TB drive.​

Bootloader will need to be fixed after this. Assuming here new cloned partition is with drive letter E: , then execute from elevated command prompt.​

bcdboot E:\windows /f UEFI​

Resulting message should be "Boot files created successfully".​

Note - first boot from cloned drive has to be done with old drive (2TB drive) physically disconnected.​

This step is not optional or you'll have to redo cloning.​

Option #2​

Delete E: partition from 1TB disk.​

Shutdown and disconnect 2TB disk and 500GB disk.​

And do clean install of windows 11 on 1TB disk.​

Thank you for the detailed reply! I’ve been following the steps and I hope it will be successful. I backed up my drives and I’m going to format and restore them to remove windows 10 on my ssd and 11 on my hdd. I will then unplug both drives and reinstall windows 11 on my new ssd.

One more issue. It seems like everything on my PC has been wiped. All of my apps, programs, and shortcuts are gone from the start menu, control panel, and desktop. However, when I check my drives in file explore all my files programs and games are still there. All the files in my drives work and run, but when I search for these apps, they don’t appear in the system, as if windows isn’t connected to them anymore.

Is there anyway to restore or reconnect these programs and files without having to reinstall everything manually?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Is there anyway to restore or reconnect these programs and files without having to reinstall everything manually?

If you did windows reinstall, then all apps will need to be reinstalled.
If you had done cloning, then all installed apps would also be cloned to new drive and app reinstall would not be necessary.

 

[jscardino]

If you did windows reinstall, then all apps will need to be reinstalled.
If you had done cloning, then all installed apps would also be cloned to new drive and app reinstall would not be necessary.

I’m a little confused can you explain more sorry

 

[jscardino]

If you did windows reinstall, then all apps will need to be reinstalled.
If you had done cloning, then all installed apps would also be cloned to new drive and app reinstall would not be necessary.

How can I go back into windows 10 with my
Old ssd? I should be able to revert back to my old windows.

https://imgur.com/a/Sid0avB

View: https://imgur.com/a/Sid0avB
That drive isn’t listed as an available boot option

 

[SkyNetRising]

That drive isn’t listed as an available boot option

Only 1TB drive is bootable.
It contains small 100MB EFI System partition. That is bootloader partition.
Other drives do not contain a bootloader. So - they are not bootable and will not appear in boot priority list.
In UEFI boot mode mode only UEFI bootable drives are listed in boot priority.

 

[SkyNetRising]

How can I go back into windows 10 with my
Old ssd? I should be able to revert back to my old windows.

Can you show current Disk Management screenshot?
If you didn't delete old windows 10 partition from 500GB drive, then
you should be able to choose windows version, when booting your pc.

Like this: