[SOLVED] Windows installed on the wrong hard drive - just catching it!

[cwombat]

Hey! Stumbled across these forums and have been reading for hours. Such an awesome place I decided I would ask a questions about something I've pretty much given up on.

So I just built a new computer and had a hiccup during install, I accidently installed windows on the 4 TB SATA drive at the start. I went back in and installed windows again on my m.2 PCle drive. When everything was setup my 4 TB drive has the 50mb boot partition and the PCle drive has nothing. I tried to boot just from the PCle drive and couldn't boot up, the SATA drive had to be there. The SATA drive is also not showing up in file explorer and I can't change it since it has the boot partition.

Hopefully I covered everything.

I've decided to fix this before I install any more programs on the computer and have to redownload everything. I would like to clone the PCle drive to an external harddrive, format it, install windows and put the clone back on it but I honestly don't think that is possible. Does anyone have any ideas on how to keep the programs and everything the way they are? Otherwise I'm just going to save files and start over.

Thanks for any input/device and if I need to clarify anything just let me know. Added a photo as well.

Photo
Can put photo inline - only let me make a link.

 

[dreamzerzz]

Plugged in
Both the disks in pc
Install AOMEI PARTITON MANAGER Highly recommended in situation like this .

Option 2. Easeus Todo Backup


Process is simple
After Installing
Open
Run Clone Drive
Select Drive and Target Partition

Advance options. . . Optimize for ssd

Its very easy
Once clone process wil end.

Restart PC
Go to Bios
Boot from the drive u cloned

If things wil be gud
Then trash the old drive . . And partition it as u want.

 

[USAFRet]

Since this is a brand new install, start over.

Have ONLY the desired drive connected, and install.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

I would like to clone the PCle drive to an external harddrive, format it, install windows and put the clone back on it

That will absolutely not work.
You can't do an install and then apply a clone over top of it, and retain that 'install'.

 

[cwombat]

Since this is a brand new install, start over.

Have ONLY the desired drive connected, and install.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

Yeah, I figured that would be the cleanest way. Now if I can figure out a way to save those 100gb of warzone and call of duty files with out redownloading everything! 🤣🤣🤣

 

[Mtop]

Thumb drives, For me Steam will re-instsall the shortcuts just have to keep all the files safe.