How to install W10 to secondary drive

[MBY]

Hello,

I have Windows 10 installed on my main hard drive, having upgraded from Win7. I have reason to suspect that this drive has some corruption issues. Among other things, SFC finds corruption it can't fix, disk usage constantly spikes to 100%, and for a while Windows was reporting a drive problem (seems to have been fixed by chkdsk but still worrying).

I've installed a new, second drive. I want to clean-install Windows 10 to this empty drive, use it to boot, and still have access to my files on the old drive while I transition. However, when starting setup from the Windows 10 ISO flash drive, I have not seen an option to select an install location. The wording seems to indicate that it's going to install in the same location as the existing Windows installation (for example, telling me that I can keep files and apps).

Does anyone know if it's possible to specify the install location and how? Thanks!

 

[mjperry51]

Try disconnecting the current hard drive and the do an installation. . .

 

[_Emi_]

do what MJperry51 says, that would be the safe thing.
then when it's done installing, you can plug it and set the priority to your new HDD so it loads windows there.

You can also do it having both drivers plugged, BUT you should set your priority to your new HDD before installing. because if not, the installation might use your old HDD BCD and just modify it, as expect it, since it would try to give you a dual boot. so if it does that, and you disconnect your old drive.e Windows might say "oh we didn't find any boot thing!, so we can't boot anything"

SO in any case I would recommend setting your new HDD as first in the priority of HDDs.

But Windows installation lets you choose what drive you want to place your windows.

You need to click on Custom advance option.


and then it let's you choose which drive you want to install on


if you install it on the same old drive, it will just replace windows and make a windows.old folder. if you install it on the new drive, it will install it normally and then have dual boot. (or that's what it should do or what it has done in my life).

 

[MBY]

Thanks, those images are exactly what I expected to get. But it seems that as long as you're running the setup file from within W10, you won't get the install location option. I used the recovery settings to boot into command prompt and ran the setup on the ISO USB flash drive. Then I did get those options. Hopefully it works out!

 

[MBY]

So this worked to install, but now I need to figure out how to get my product key and activate. My original system was Win7 upgraded to 10 through Windows update. I read in a thread on here that changing drives shouldn't be a problem for activation as long as the motherboard is the same. But I still need to find the full key. Recovery menu in settings only shows partial; I have my old W7 key but I think it changes when you upgrade.