How To Install Windows On A PCIe SSD

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 Aristoc wrote:

Hi there,

I have 
Plextor PX-512M8PeG M8P Series 2.5" 512GB PCIE NVME M.2 Radiator Gen3x4 Internal SSD, Red-in-Black

its listed as supported on the asrock MOBO storage support list. 

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty%20X99M%20Killer/?cat=Storage

It sounds like it's best to install windows 10 from a bootable USB. After that migrate or maybe better to  re-install other programs from HDD to  M.2  since i have a 7+ year old HDD. 

Or if I decide I just want to leave my programs on my original HDD as my programs/storage drive , do I have to erase the Win 10 OS from my HDD?

Thanks

You could run your programs from your old HDD if they weren't installed on it, and appear in the Programs and Features list. But one of the advantages of using any type of SSD is that the SSD will be so much faster loading programs, it is a shame to waste it.

How would you "migrate" your programs on the HDD to another drive? It's always necessary to install programs on the OS drive, unless the programs can be run simply from the downloaded file. If the programs are "installed" with an installation program, they are on the OS drive, and while you may be able to create links to those programs on the old HDD, that again defeats the purpose of using an SSD.

One situation with having multiple drives with OS installations on them in one PC is keeping the boot order correct. Windows may detect both of them and ask you to choose which one to boot from every time you start or restart the PC.

When you install Windows on your new SSD, be sure that the HDD is not connected to the board at the same time. Just removing the power cable from the HDD is enough. Otherwise the Window installation program will normally put the boot/system partition on the other drive, which makes the PC dependent on both drives. You can fix this later, but why not do it right in the first place?

The main reason to use a USB flash drive installation media is because when using an NVMe SSD, you must select the entry in the boot order for the installation media with the prefix "UEFI:". Without going into the technical details, it is necessary. It is not a given that an optical disk will provide an entry in the boot order with the "UEFI:" prefix. A USB flash drive with a Windows ISO image on it will always provide that entry in the boot order.