[SOLVED] Second SSD with windows keeps vanishing

[PressReturnTo Nothing]

A very good morning/afternoon,

Recently I've been running into storage issues on my main SSD, so I decided to upgrade it to a faster and bigger one.

I got the SSD and installed windows 10 on it so I could copy what files I wanted from the old install to the new one.

Due to a very busy work schedule, that meant I installed it on a weekend, and wouldn't get around to transferring on the next weekend.

By the next weekend, the BIOS would no longer recognize it as a boot disk. It still shows up in Windows as a drive, and it accepts copying to and from it just fine. The fact that copying works makes me feel the disk isn't defective.

Rough idea of the setup
SSD1: Windows 10 boot disk. Used for Windows and a handful of programs that don't accept an alternate install drive
SSD2: New Windows 10 install. Fresh disk, with only Windows 10 installed on it.
There are several other HDD/SSD/M.2's as well


So far I've retried 3 times, waiting with file transfers to see if the issue persisted. Every time it's the same.
Install Windows 10 on the new SSD, boot to it just fine, two to three days after, it's not longer appearing in the boot options.

I've tried unplugging the drive I'm not trying to boot to, but that doesn't let me boot to the new drive either after it happens.

Due to working from home I can't restart from a clean install overnight so to speak. I've considered cloning or bulk copying to the new disk and keeping the old one out, but a clean install seems much more sensible to me.

I've also updated my BIOS to the latest version available.

While I'm normally alright troubleshooting PC issues and fixing them, I don't have much experience with dual boot and any related issues. What am I missing here?

 

[dwd999]

The windows installer is very particular about how it works (at this point I could be snarky and say its because its poorly written). To install, you must have only 1 disk drive connected in your computer, meaning that you would need to temporarily disconnect your old drive. Otherwise windows automatically assumes that you want a dual boot system. So you would need to reinstall with only 1 drive connected or clone your old drive onto your new drive with a program like the free Macrium software.

 

[PressReturnTo Nothing]

Does that hold true even if the second disk is no longer seen as a boot option at all, even for dual boot purposes?

 

[USAFRet]

Does that hold true even if the second disk is no longer seen as a boot option at all, even for dual boot purposes?

If second drive exists, the boot partition WILL end up on that drive during the OS install.
Not something you choose or can prevent, it just does it.

Physical disconnection during the OS install process.