Install Windows 10 with both HDD and SSD attached?

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Sarkreth

Sarkreth

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Apr 18, 2017
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I just got a new laptop which comes stock with an HDD, but I'm immediately replacing it with an SSD. The laptop has separate slots for both of the drives, so I should be able to install Windows to the SSD while running from the HDD, no external media required.

What the "cleanest" way to do this? By "cleanest", I mean not from a user-convenience standpoint, but from perspective of not installing tools that might do things I don't know about or offer options I won't need.

I'd prefer not to "clone" an install since that word makes me think it could somehow not be as good as a "real" install. Because this laptop is brand-new, there's no personal data that needs preserving. Just installing a brand-new OS from another place with another brand-new OS.
 
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LowlySkeleton
The usually way of going about it is to detach the HDD and install only the SSD (though you can just fresh install with them both already mounted). Perform a fresh install on the SSD and setup windows. After that, plug in your HDD and boot up your system into the bios. From there, you want to make sure the boot priority is set to the SSD as the first boot drive; you don't want to boot up to find that you are loading up the OS from the HDD.

After you finished up with the bios, boot up into windows. You can then look through your HDD and transfer out all your important files if you have any. Go into the control panel>system and security and look for "Create and format hard drive partitions". From there, you will see all your SSD and your...
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LowlySkeleton

LowlySkeleton

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Aug 5, 2015
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The usually way of going about it is to detach the HDD and install only the SSD (though you can just fresh install with them both already mounted). Perform a fresh install on the SSD and setup windows. After that, plug in your HDD and boot up your system into the bios. From there, you want to make sure the boot priority is set to the SSD as the first boot drive; you don't want to boot up to find that you are loading up the OS from the HDD.

After you finished up with the bios, boot up into windows. You can then look through your HDD and transfer out all your important files if you have any. Go into the control panel>system and security and look for "Create and format hard drive partitions". From there, you will see all your SSD and your HDD, with all their different partitions. Look for the partitions that correspond to the HDD and start reformatting them. Your HDD might have multiple partitions, just reformat them and delete the volumes by right clicking. Afterwards, you can go create a new volume from the unallocated space. This new volume will be the space you will use as your primary storage.

You can watch this video for a similar guide to setting up your SSD as well as setting up the storage for your HDD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG4LXw4Nd5U
 
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