Question Windows 10 installed on G drive

[Pcnub93]

Alright so self explanatory, today I finally made the switch from windows 7 x64 to windows 10x64 and while I was downloading some apps I noticed windows 10 installed itself on G drive and I currently don't have a visible C drive. What can I do to get windows 10 over to a correct C drive? This PC has 2 1tb hdds, could I rename the other drive to C and then transfer the OS over? Could I do a factory reset again and windows would rename the drives automatically? I have no files to lose so that's a plus. Thanks everyone for your time!

 

[Lutfij]

No, you can't, if it was that simple we'd all be renaming the drives and calling it a day. Actually the simplest thing you can do, is to rename the drive that has the installation on it at the moment and during your reinstallation process of Windows 10 format the drive which you've earmarked as the (G drive)installed drive. You'd be best off renaming the drive you want to install the OS on(that is currently C) so that is earmarked during the installation process.

We ideally suggest having only the drive that you wish to install the OS on, connected to the primary SATA port on the system to avoid any confusions during installation.

 

[Colif]

G won't do as some files expect to be installed on C, drivers for instance might be hard coded to C and without it being the boot drive, it could do all sorts of damage.

Download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB

Turn pc off and unplug power
remove the data cable from every drive in PC except the one you want WIndows 10 on
follow this guide: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/

once win 10 can boot with just 1 drive in it, reattach the other drives and make sure none of them are added to boot order in bios

 

[Pcnub93]

Download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB

Turn pc off and unplug power
remove the data cable from every drive in PC except the one you want WIndows 10 on
follow this guide: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/

once win 10 can boot with just 1 drive in it, reattach the other drives and make sure none of them are added to boot order in bios

Thanks for the info, I'm guessing if I would have unplugged my other drives during the last installation this wouldn't have happened in the first place 😂 live and learn.. thank you!

 

[Colif]

your drives sound confusing, might want to run this on other drives once win 10 is fixed

from desktop,
go to settings/update & security/recovery
under advanced startup, click restart now
pc restart in blue menu
Pick troubleshoot
Pick advanced
Pick Command Prompt
Type diskpart and press enter
Type list disk and press enter
This will show the list of drives currently attached to PC, make note of the drive number of the drive you want to wipe

If Disk 1 is the drive you want to clear, type select 1) and press enter. A message will confirm it is selected

Warning: Diskpart Erase/Clean will permanently erase/destroy all data on the selected drive. Please be certain that you are erasing the correct disk.

Once you sure its right disk, type Clean and press enter

The Command Prompt window will display the message "DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk". Close out of the Command Prompt window by clicking the red X in the upper right hand corner.

Make sure not to do that to C drive

Format drives and create partitions in windows using Disk management. I only used diskpart as it was possible you had more than 1 install on drive as its strange windows even chose drive G.

 

[Pcnub93]

G won't do as some files expect to be installed on C, drivers for instance might be hard coded to C and without it being the boot drive, it could do all sorts of damage.

Download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB

Turn pc off and unplug power
remove the data cable from every drive in PC except the one you want WIndows 10 on
follow this guide: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/

once win 10 can boot with just 1 drive in it, reattach the other drives and make sure none of them are added to boot order in bios

Thanks for the info, I'm guessing if I would have unplugged my other drives during the last installation this wouldn't have happened in the first place 😂 live and learn.. thank you!

No, you can't, if it was that simple we'd all be renaming the drives and calling it a day. Actually the simplest thing you can do, is to rename the drive that has the installation on it at the moment and during your reinstallation process of Windows 10 format the drive which you've earmarked as the (G drive)installed drive. You'd be best off renaming the drive you want to install the OS on(that is currently C) so that is earmarked during the installation process.

We ideally suggest having only the drive that you wish to install the OS on, connected to the primary SATA port on the system to avoid any confusions during installation.

No, you can't, if it was that simple we'd all be renaming the drives and calling it a day. Actually the simplest thing you can do, is to rename the drive that has the installation on it at the moment and during your reinstallation process of Windows 10 format the drive which you've earmarked as the (G drive)installed drive. You'd be best off renaming the drive you want to install the OS on(that is currently C) so that is earmarked during the installation process.

We ideally suggest having only the drive that you wish to install the OS on, connected to the primary SATA port on the system to avoid any confusions during installation.

Thanks a lot for all the Info, I think I can tackle this tomorrow and get things back to how they should be!

your drives sound confusing, might want to run this on other drives once win 10 is fixed

from desktop,
go to settings/update & security/recovery
under advanced startup, click restart now
pc restart in blue menu
Pick troubleshoot
Pick advanced
Pick Command Prompt
Type diskpart and press enter
Type list disk and press enter
This will show the list of drives currently attached to PC, make note of the drive number of the drive you want to wipe

If Disk 1 is the drive you want to clear, type select 1) and press enter. A message will confirm it is selected

Warning: Diskpart Erase/Clean will permanently erase/destroy all data on the selected drive. Please be certain that you are erasing the correct disk.

Once you sure its right disk, type Clean and press enter

The Command Prompt window will display the message "DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk". Close out of the Command Prompt window by clicking the red X in the upper right hand corner.

Make sure not to do that to C drive

Format drives and create partitions in windows using Disk management. I only used diskpart as it was possible you had more than 1 install on drive as its strange windows even chose drive G.

I think I'm going to format my secondary drive tomorrow and then just run it as a single primary drive. I don't even need 2 hdds, so why add to the confusion, I'll format it and then get a USB with a win 10 install guide and start fresh.

 

[britechguy]

Not that I'm disputing anything that's been said, but were I ever to find I had a device driver that was hard-coded to a fixed drive letter the maker would be hearing from me, pronto, and I'd stop buying anything from them in the future.

There is absolutely, positively no justification for hard-coding drives/paths in this day and age.

Windows 10, like all prior Windows, uses C: as its convention for the system drive, but I have seen rare occasions for reasons I cannot fathom where someone elected to have Windows install to a different drive letter as the system disk. I have never seen any software of any sort fail on those systems, as I presumed they did the correct thing and interrogate via system calls when they need to construct the correct path to something under "the system drive," not presume C:.

 

[britechguy]

Just in case having an easily printable copy would be handy:

Doing a completely clean (re)install:

a) Completely Clean Win10 (Re)install Using MCT to Download Win10 ISO File

b) Completely Clean Win10 (Re)install Using MCT to Create a Bootable USB Drive