Installing Windows 11

[Masque]

Tomorrow my M.2 drive arrives for my new motherboard. I didn't have enough cash to get it when i got the motherboard. My Windows 10 is a nearly fresh install, with about 10 games on it that I don't want to have to download again. Here's the plan, tell me what i'm doing right or wrong:

-- Unplug my current C: drive (SATA SSD).
-- Install my new M.2 drive.
-- Boot from USB with auto-run windows installer
-- Select my new M.2 drive (does it have to be formatted? Does the installer do that for me?)
-- Install windows 11 and set up
-- Turn off PC, plug former system drive back into SATA, boot back into BIOS

-- ?? Don't know. Will BIOS automatically assign a new drive letter for what used to be my C: drive?

-- What next?

-- Eventually: migrate my Steam library from the old C: drive to the new M.2 C: drive. I've read on these pages that I don't need my games on the M.2 drive, but I want to take advantage of DirectStorage if I can, just to try it out. (The old drive, of course, still contains all of Windows 10, is this a problem at this point in my process? It also contains a few programs such as MalwareBytes, ShareX, and others which I have no problem re-downloading for the new OS. Will the old Windows files on the SATA drive interfere with Windows 11 on the M.2 drive? Note, I'm using a newly-purchased key for 11, not my old key)

-- Finally -- format my old C: drive and make it fresh and empty.

What about drivers? I know, of course, how to install drivers for my RTX card, but what about my motherboard and chipset? Does Windows do this automatically? The motherboard didn't come with a CD with drivers on it -- and I had it installed by a local PC shop, so I didn't do any of that.

[PopinFRESH]

BIOS doesn't assign drive letters, that is a Windows thing. The Windows installer will format the disk for you.

Basically do what you are suggesting but after you've completed installing Windows 11 on the new SSD then just shutdown and re-connect your SSD. Boot back into Windows 11 and Windows should automatically allocate another drive letter to that SSD like D:\.

Install Steam, then you can just copy the game folder from the Steam library directory from your original disk to the new Steam library folder.

Also, yes you'll want to download at least your moterboard chipset drivers and your NIC drivers prior to installation. I'd recommend downloading all of the drivers first so you can install them on first boot.

[Masque]

-- So right now I should download the ASUS drivers and put them on a USB drive?

For Steam library, do I just copy the steamapps/Common folder over to the new drive?

Basically, my desired end result here: new M.2 drive with Windows 11 and my Steam library, and all my hardware working (which only consists of motherboard-chipset and GPU). I can only assume that Windows will find the drivers automatically for my keyboard, mouse, and game controller, since I never had to manually install drivers for them in the first place.

Here's what I find on the ASUS drfiver page for Win 11 for my board:

Realtek LAN Driver
AMD Chipset Driver
Realtek Audio Driver
AMD Graphics Driver
ASUS AI Suite 3
AMD RAIDXpert2 Utility
Armory Crate & Aura Creator Installer

I should get them all onto a USB right now then?

Edit: what are NIC drivers you mentioned?

[Midnight Aurais]

first i got to say ssd vs m.2 in margins of performance on windows not that huge i know because i got regular ssd's and the kingston kc3000 m.2 that goes to 7000 mhz unless you got the old ssd's you ain't going to notice in day to day use

second advise always consider the c drive a volatile drive what do i mean with that if crap hits the fan you cannot access your c drive and if you got files on there and you do not have a second pc to use you are screwed operating systems will only ever touch the c drive as a operating system cannot exist outside the c drive

what you could do is partition the m.2 in disk management so you can use it then right click it and shrink volume to 250-300 gb so you can install a bunch of programs alongside the windows install once you did that you got a second partition on the drive saying unallocated just leave it like that so its easier in the windows setup to recognize

once done on the nvme drive you can still see in windows not the unallocated one you can collect whatever you need from the ssd to the nvme this will not be overwriten so collecting things include the following

- documents, pictures, videos, music
(if you use it it is your files otherwise for majority documents also store savegames)

- C:\Users\(user)\Saved Games
- use like winrar to archive the folders inside : C:\Users\(user)\appdata
- open program files and the (x86) search for any game launcher and copy the user folders or on the safe side just get the whole folder if you cant find it

why these steps config and savegames recovery devs throw saves all over the place

in your case you collect game folders aswel

once done with the recovery you can start getting into the setup of windows when you get to the partition section for the harddrives look at the table it should say something along this

drive 0 with multiple partitions (ssd with windows)
drive 1 with a partition that is still unallocated (nvme)

(alternatively you can remember the sizes the drives were at to recognize which is which)

now if you did the recovery correct and got nothing on the ssd you just delete all the partitions belonging to the ssd and just leave it like drive 0 unallocated if you format it creates the wrong partitions you do not want on the ssd this can be addressed later

once done click on drive 1 unallocated and click next on the windows install the setup wil partition the drive itself

once installed you just go in disk management and create a new disk from the ssd and done

you used the saved files done in the recovery and just place back the savegames were they used to be get steam installed on the c drive then in steam go settings storage and there you can either add both the nvme first partition and the ssd to the list then drag the games in either the ssd or nvme steamlibrary>steamapps>common then click install in steam and point it to the drive were its installed and it wil verify

if you run into any issues verifying other launchers let me know some are annoying just say to verify the game technically this step can be skipped if you take the manifest file along with you to the drive you install the game onto

why go this route i suggest because now if something happends to your windows install it is just your programs screwed savegames unfortunately too unless they are cloud backupped but

+ side trustedinstaller can no longer kidnap folders if you never encountered it its why i never install games on the c drive trustedinstaller can deny access to files a game might need developers often found ways past this but sometimes you find a game that just has a bunch of errors in the log if you allready had that you know why now

if you have to install on c drive for games just do c:\games that way its not kidnapped by trustedinstaller

installations should be less headache inducing most definitely if you now refuse to keep your personal files on the c drive

one thing to mention reasons why you want to do the deletion of the ssd partitions instead of in windows is from a nasty suprise when windows fricking decided to use the boot partition of a other drive for its bootfiles instead of its own fricking drive that i deleted because it is not the drive assigned for windows... i no longer take windows shenanigans anymore

[Masque]

I don't keep a lot of documents, but I keep them backed up on drives other than C:. I'm a gamer, primarily, and no power user by any stretch. Files? What files? The only time I ever have lots of files is when I'm doing a 700 mod build for Skyrim, which I'm not doing right now. I'll be sure to use the D or E drives for those.

I don't worry about game save files, as I keep them backed up in clouds, mainly Steam.

Speed of my SATA drives is max 540 MB/s. Speed of my new M.2 is 10,000 MB/s, which is why I'm doing it -- and also to use DirectStorage, which I want to test out on a few games to see if they perform like they do on the latest Xbox, regarding instant resumption, level loading, texture streaming, etc.

I won't be making a partition, but thanks for the advice, anyway. I (will) have two empty, formatted SATA 1TB SSDs and in case I ever need it, an empty, unformatted, and unconnected SATA spinning 7200 RPM 1TB HDD, which I keep unconnected because I don't like the constant noise of the drive heads doing god knows what to an empty drive, and besides it's just one measly Terabyte (File that under: Words I never thought I'd utter in the 1990s).

[Midnight Aurais]

wel you seem to have a different solution so cant fault you for that atleast you know to backup things mentioned it because alot get screwed when they have no way to recover files from the c drive as they do not have a way to recover it

the pitfall of the ssd can still be there since you plan to format it but make sure atleast you delete those boot partitions from the ssd like i mentioned it it has the potential to use a boot partition from a other drive and if you delete that from the ssd in disk management after install nothing happends till you restart and find out your boot.efi got nuked while a perfectly fine boot.efi is on the drive windows is installed on...windows...

the solution i suggest basically makes yolo new windows install hey look at that my files were on other drives all along

by the way directstorage does not require the main drive to be directstorage compatible it literally just requires a nvme you can check that aswel if you windows+g then gaming features

[Masque]

I learned my lesson a couple of years ago when my SATA SSD C: drive died.

Took me forever to find all my passwords. I didn't bemoan losing any files -- just losing all my passwords (including email) was like losing your wallet or all your keys. Genuine nightmare.

Edit: okay I did kinda bemoan losing the 700+ mod build I had just completed, and which took me about a month to learn and do. All on the C drive. As you said, not a good idea.

My new drive (gets here tomorrow) is the second-fastest tier of PCIe 5.0 drives available right now. 10,000 MB/s, and definitely DirectStorage compatible. The 14,000 MB/s drives were just a bit too pricey for me at the moment.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DKP1WH7Y

I figure 20x faster than SATA is good enough for now.

[Masque]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Midnight Aurais:

the pitfall of the ssd can still be there since you plan to format it but make sure atleast you delete those boot partitions from the ssd like i mentioned it it has the potential to use a boot partition from a other drive and if you delete that from the ssd in disk management after install nothing happends till you restart and find out your boot.efi got nuked while a perfectly fine boot.efi is on the drive windows is installed on...windows...

Is this option (delete boot partitions from my old SSD) something I'll be able to see in the Format dialogue, or is this something arcane?

[Midnight Aurais]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Masque:

I learned my lesson a couple of years ago when my SATA SSD C: drive died.

Took me forever to find all my passwords. I didn't bemoan losing any files -- just losing all my passwords (including email) was like losing your wallet or all your keys. Genuine nightmare.

My new drive (gets here tomorrow) is the second-fastest tier of PCIe 5.0 drives available right now. 10,000 MB/s, and definitely DirectStorage compatible. The 14,000 MB/s drives were just a bit too pricey for me at the moment.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DKP1WH7Y

nice just be carefull with the heat though do most definitely make sure it has a heatspreader as that is were there are issues with the pci 5.0 it ain't the speeds but the cooling

[Masque]

Yes, my new Mobo came with a heatsink for the M.2 slot, I'll be sure to use it.

[Midnight Aurais]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Masque:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Midnight Aurais:

the pitfall of the ssd can still be there since you plan to format it but make sure atleast you delete those boot partitions from the ssd like i mentioned it it has the potential to use a boot partition from a other drive and if you delete that from the ssd in disk management after install nothing happends till you restart and find out your boot.efi got nuked while a perfectly fine boot.efi is on the drive windows is installed on...windows...

Is this option (delete boot partitions from my old SSD) something I'll be able to see in the Format dialogue, or is this something arcane?

no like mentioned you wil just see drive 0 with a bunch of partitions and drive 1 with a unallocated partition if you kept both in literally just keep the biggest partition out of the partitions on drive 0 and that is your data partition the one you have access in windows to delete the other small ones and it no longer will cause issues

just as a example it looks like this
https://prod-care-community-cdn.sprinklr.com/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-ab9d-31aa7cacb376/communityasset-426eed6d-459d-46eb-9406-fdf831b50d7a-843465895

just to clarify in the picture you delete
drive 0 partition 1
drive 0 partition 2
drive 0 partition 4

you keep drive 0 partition 3

[Masque]

OH now I'm totally confused. When did drives get numbers?

When I put my new, out of the box M.2 drive in and turn on the PC and run the installer -- which drive number (0 or 1) is going to show for my new drive?

When I get to the point when I re-plug my old SSD back into SATA, what does the dialogue you just posted a screenshot of have to do with anything I'll see, as the install of Windows 11 will already have taken place?

My head spins.

When I run the installer, I'm doing it with the old drive UNPLUGGED.

[Midnight Aurais]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Masque:

OH now I'm totally confused. When did drives get numbers?

When I put my new, out of the box M.2 drive in and turn on the PC and run the installer -- which drive number (0 or 1) is going to show for my new drive?

When I get to the point when I re-plug my old SSD back into SATA, what does the dialogue you just posted a screenshot of have to do with anything I'll see, as the install of Windows 11 will already have taken place?

My head spins.

When I run the installer, I'm doing it with the old drive UNPLUGGED.

calm down it looks more intimidating then it is use logic

your bios logs the location of your hardware to it it sees just drive 0 and 1 once you installed the nvme it doesn't care its a harddrive or ssd for that part because a port got filled

right now with your ssd in the system you look like the picture with drive 0 having multiple partitions the one in the red line is the drive you see in windows behind it says primary

see the partitions as just a cake you can cut in pieces so everybody has a piece of their cake in this case a portion of storage to do whatever they want with windows in this case is just that sneaky neighbour that walks by and uses their finger to taste the cake 3 times (the small partitions) thats basically what you gotta know they are dividers

in windows you can see the main partition the other 3 are hidden from you always been like this

ow i might know what is going on here they no longer throw you to their partition manager likely because you only had 1 drive lol either way its just another step you get i always got multiple drives so it always threw me to it atleast thats my guess why you do not see it

[SlowClick]

I'd clone* the current drive C to the new M.2 drive, then change them over. Worry about Win11 after that. If the current drive C is not installed in the new build, still do this and let Windows sort itself out.

* IMHO the safest way to clone is to take an image of the source, then restore the image to the target drive.

[Masque]

I actually have two drives currently. Both SATA SSD.

One C: system, the other D: fresh, new, empty.

But as I said, I shouldn't see my old Windows partition in this dialogue, as I'll have the old SSD unplugged when I install to the new M.2 drive. I should only see two empty drives -- one M.2, and the other SATA.

[Masque]

Diposting pertama kali oleh SlowClick:

I'd clone* the current drive C to the new M.2 drive, then change them over. Worry about Win11 after that. If the current drive C is not installed in the new build, still do this and let Windows sort itself out.

* IMHO the safest way to clone is to take an image of the source, then restore the image to the target drive.

I thought about doing that with Macrium Reflect but decided I'd rather install a new OS to a brand new drive instead of doing the Update.