Question NVME and HDD Weird Windows Issue

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ChuckSneed

Jun 20, 2025
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Hello. A couple years ago, I upgraded to an NVME from a really slow HDD. I moved Windows to my NVME and everything has been running smoothly. I recently moved my PC into a new case, and originally I was just going to toss the old HDD. When I booted my computer, it told me I needed to install Windows. Strange, because Windows was already installed on my NVME. I had a weird feeling to plug in my old HDD, so I did, and my computer started up normally. Now everything runs just fine.

My NVME is my boot drive and everything, the only files on my HDD are a couple of random documents and replays. I don't understand why having my old drive is required for Windows to boot up when everything is installed and boots from my NVME. Any idea why this is?
 
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ChuckSneed said:
Hello. A couple years ago, I upgraded to an NVME from a really slow HDD. I moved Windows to my NVME and everything has been running smoothly. I recently moved my PC into a new case, and originally I was just going to toss the old HDD. When I booted my computer, it told me I needed to install Windows. Strange, because Windows was already installed on my NVME. I had a weird feeling to plug in my old HDD, so I did, and my computer started up normally. Now everything runs just fine.

My NVME is my boot drive and everything, the only files on my HDD are a couple of random documents and replays. I don't understand why having my old drive is required for Windows to boot up when everything is installed and boots from my NVME. Any idea why this is?
Click to expand...
How did you "move" Windows to the new drive?
After this "move", did you verify it worked with only the new drive?
 
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USAFRet said:
How did you "move" Windows to the new drive?
After this "move", did you verify it worked with only the new drive?
Click to expand...
It was a couple of years ago so I don't remember exactly. I know I did it via watching a youtube video, and used a program called "EaseUS Disk Copy". Everything works as intended other than when I remove my old drive. I did not verify if it worked with only the new drive at the time.
 
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ChuckSneed said:
It was a couple of years ago so I don't remember exactly. I know I did it via watching a youtube video, and used a program called "EaseUS Disk Copy". Everything works as intended other than when I remove my old drive. I did not verify if it worked with only the new drive at the time.
Click to expand...
Well...the boot partition did not end up on your NVMe drive.
Either software fault, or something you did.

Please show us a screencap of your Disk Management window.

There are ways to semi-easily fix this, but I'll leave the specific steps to others.
 
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