How to persistently have have PC boot form main disk regardless of adding other disks to configuration?

[Satearn]

I have 1 desktop and 2 laptops + many HDD and SSD's.

To manage and transfer data, I like to do all the work on the desktop, it has 6 SATA ports and that's much faster than networking or USB3.

So there is a lot of shuffling around, and some disks have OS on them.

So often I wind up with 2-3 disks with Windows 10 on them, and on reboot the system gets confused and picks the wrong disk.

Is there a way to tell the PC to ALWAYS boot from the same disk, regardless of other OS on other disks connected?

When I get conflicts on reboot (and sometimes the PC just restart and goes into automatic repair...), I need to reboot and get in Bios and manually select the appropriate disk, this is very annoying and distracting.

There used to be something called a "slave" disk?

CPU/Processor: Intel i5-8400
Memory: DDR4 16 GIGS Kingston Hyper X Furry
MOBO: As Rock z370pro 4
Intel HD Graphics 630
Operating System: Windows 10 64 bit
SSD 1: Samsung EVO 860 250Gigs (OS)
SSD 2: Samsung EVO 850 120Gigs (OS)
HDD 3: Hitachi 1 terra
HDD 4: Hitachi 500 Gig
HDD 5: Toshiba 500 Gig (OS)
BIOS: p3.20

 

[USAFRet]

Moving OS drives around?
Connecting and disconnecting them all the time?

Don't do that.

You need some sort of central storage place.
All these systems talking to a NAS over the LAN is not any slower than powering on and off, and physically swapping drives around.

 

[Satearn]

Moving OS drives around?
Connecting and disconnecting them all the time?

Don't do that.

You need some sort of central storage place.
All these systems talking to a NAS over the LAN is not any slower than powering on and off, and physically swapping drives around.

I don't do it that often, not like everyday, maybe once a week or so. And I run at least 4 disks on desktop.

The central storage space is the desktop.

Let's say I need to transfer 100 000 files, even with SATA to SATA internally, it takes a full hour, would take 8 with USB3, not sure about network cable...

So faster and easier to slap laptop disk in desktop, paste the data, and slap it back in laptop.

I'm open to exploring more options, but for now, I just want the MOBO to boot to same disk forever, without needing to get into bios to reset the boot order everytime I change disks around, is this even possible?

Is there a utility for this that I could from Win 10?

 

[USAFRet]

100,000 files of what?

Options:
An external dock with an eSATA port. Pretty much just as fast as internal SATA.
Break up this "100,000" files. Does that need to be done all at once?

Basically, though...the BIOS boot order should take care of this.
Your internal drive as #1. It should never see other drives to try to boot from them.

 

[Satearn]

100,000 files of what?

Options:
An external dock with an eSATA port. Pretty much just as fast as internal SATA.
Break up this "100,000" files. Does that need to be done all at once?

Basically, though...the BIOS boot order should take care of this.
Your internal drive as #1. It should never see other drives to try to boot from them.

The 100 000 files+ are entire websites and intranet that I use on Xampp portable, Drupal sites, 250 modules websites etc..., some sites have 850 pages and 5000 images, tons and tons of small files.

Maybe there is something wrong with the motherboard, because it DOES keep switching back and forth between disks, it seeks any disk with OS on it, and doesn't stick to native C: drive

 

[USAFRet]

The 100 000 files+ are entire websites and intranet that I use on Xampp portable, Drupal sites, 250 modules websites etc..., some sites have 850 pages and 5000 images, tons and tons of small files.

Maybe there is something wrong with the motherboard, because it DOES keep switching back and forth between disks, it seeks any disk with OS on it, and doesn't stick to native C: drive

And this speaks even more to some centralized storage, and version control.
Not all of those 100k files are changing every week.

 

[Satearn]

The 100 000 files+ are entire websites and intranet that I use on Xampp portable, Drupal sites, 250 modules websites etc..., some sites have 850 pages and 5000 images, tons and tons of small files.

Maybe there is something wrong with the motherboard, because it DOES keep switching back and forth between disks, it seeks any disk with OS on it, and doesn't stick to native C: drive

And this speaks even more to some centralized storage, and version control.
Not all of those 100k files are changing every week.

yes indeed, actually I'm thinking of working with https://freefilesync.org/ however, the question remains the same, regardless of if my situation is less than ideal...

How to get mobo to boot to same disk ALL the time , regardless of connected disk configuration, I always keep the main OS on same port by the way

 

[USAFRet]

yes indeed, actually I'm thinking of working with https://freefilesync.org/ however, the question remains the same, regardless of if my situation is less than ideal...

How to get mobo to boot to same disk ALL the time , regardless of connected disk configuration, I always keep the main OS on same port by the way

FreeFileSync or SyncBackFree. I've used both.

As to why your system keeps trying to change where it boots from...dunno.
It should not do that.

 

[Satearn]

yes indeed, actually I'm thinking of working with https://freefilesync.org/ however, the question remains the same, regardless of if my situation is less than ideal...

How to get mobo to boot to same disk ALL the time , regardless of connected disk configuration, I always keep the main OS on same port by the way

FreeFileSync or SyncBackFree. I've used both.

As to why your system keeps trying to change where it boots from...dunno.
It should not do that.

😉

Do you think the mobo is faulty? I've had otthe issues before with it, bought new SSD, updated BIOS, reformated, checked RAM and changed slots, I sometimes get PSU power-kernel errors, could that be the problem?

Power shuts off suddenly and when reboot, mobo gets confused on what disk to choose?

Is there tool to troubleshoot mobo I could try?

 

[USAFRet]

Do you think the mobo is faulty? I've had otthe issues before with it, bought new SSD, updated BIOS, reformated, checked RAM and changed slots, I sometimes get PSU power-kernel errors, could that be the problem?

Power shuts off suddenly and when reboot, mobo gets confused on what disk to choose?

Is there tool to troubleshoot mobo I could try?

Well, there are certainly issues.
There should be NO sudden power off's

What is the full list of parts? Make/model, etc.

 

[Satearn]

Do you think the mobo is faulty? I've had otthe issues before with it, bought new SSD, updated BIOS, reformated, checked RAM and changed slots, I sometimes get PSU power-kernel errors, could that be the problem?

Power shuts off suddenly and when reboot, mobo gets confused on what disk to choose?

Is there tool to troubleshoot mobo I could try?

Well, there are certainly issues.
There should be NO sudden power off's

What is the full list of parts? Make/model, etc.

Desktop
CPU/Processor: Intel i5-8400
Memory: DDR4 16 GIGS Kingston Hyper X Furry
MOBO: As Rock z370pro 4
PSU: Corsair VS450
Monitor: LG 24MP48HQ-P 24"
Intel HD Graphics 630
Operating System: Windows 10 64 bit
SSD 1: Samsung EVO 860 250Gigs
SSD 2: Samsung EVO 850 120Gigs
HDD 3: Hitachi 1 terra
Serial: 79M0XB264580
BIOS: p3.20

 

[Satearn]

Ok, found the answer to my question.

Step 1.

Getting into Bios and find disk labeled 0, take note of the disk number

Step 2.

Go view the disks on the PC and identify disk 0

Step 3.

Open the case,and substitute disk using slot 0 with disk that runs OS

Step 4.

Disconnect all disks except OS disk

Step 5

Restart

Step 6

Reconnect all disks

Step 7

Restart

After doing that, the OS holds disk 0 (I suppose the index 0 = first disk, same as in computer languages, so 0 actually = 1), you can check by going in BIOS.

With this setup, the OS disk is always the first to boot, regardless if you put other disks with OS in there.