Why Microsoft Why?

As suggested, disconnect all drives except the one you want to install the OS on. I do this for any OS (Linux, BSD, Windows, etc.). That way you’re absolutely sure. (Yes, I know there are situations where disconnecting drives is not convenient or even possible in some instances…)
 
Um, well he had existing UEFI system partitions in place that the OS was picking up on, likely believing there was an existing install. It was a user error. The drives should have been properly reformatted prior to reconnecting to the system as secondary drives.

Those were probably left over from my old Intel Core i7-4790K as most of my spinning drives are from that build.
I had an old Samsung M.2 SSD on that board this was Windows 7 but I did have 10 on it at the time when I got my Ryzen 7 build

No it was an installer error to not let the user decide which disk is used for install. Period.

I remember the old installers let you custimize more of the install portion like naming the PC (my biggest peeve is I have to do it AFTER the install now!)
and it let you install Windows in a folder other then C:\Windows

it does let you choose where the os goes, but not the boot loader stuff though. does any os? disconnecting non-os drives has been a basic to-do during install for ages.
Not so easy for internal SATA drives though, but I did find out I can just disable the SATA controller on the board as it is an NVMe drive not SATA
 
You can choose on Arch Linux...but you better be sure which you are installing to. Can be difficult if they're all the same model and don't contain any data yet.

Edit: otoh, I guess it doesn't matter too much if they're all the same and have no data. 🤷‍♂️
 
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On Windows install it doesn't tell you which drive is which.

I had a tough call because I bought 2 M.2 drives, same size, but one is faster (PCIe 4) but they looked exactly the same.

Just picked "Drive 2" as a lucky guess and it worked, but would have been easier if it identified the drives in some way.
 
OK I suppose if you have multiple drives of the same size installed, it can be a pain. But SATA ports should be in order from 0-5. I'm not sure if M.2 would start as disk 0 or like disk 6. I believe my PCI-E storage device is disk 0 and goes up from there.

Speaking of that, if you have no M.2/PCIe storage attached, I don't know if that would make SATA start at disk0 or not. I don't have enough spare parts to swap around and test.

If your drives are different sizes then of course you can tell. From the install screen, you can also press Shift+F10 to bring up CMD and type in diskpart and then list disk.
 
OK I suppose if you have multiple drives of the same size installed, it can be a pain. But SATA ports should be in order from 0-5. I'm not sure if M.2 would start as disk 0 or like disk 6. I believe my PCI-E storage device is disk 0 and goes up from there.

Speaking of that, if you have no M.2/PCIe storage attached, I don't know if that would make SATA start at disk0 or not. I don't have enough spare parts to swap around and test.

If your drives are different sizes then of course you can tell. From the install screen, you can also press Shift+F10 to bring up CMD and type in diskpart and then list disk.
I am using 5 SATA drives and 2 M.2's and the M.2's are Disk 5 & 6 in Disk Management. I posted a screenshot of it on the previous page.

this is my other PC that I am currently using for my friends Chia plotting and farming.
I migrated my main PC's OS to the 980 Pro so I wouldn't have to re-install everything on this machine as it will become my main PC eventually and I wanted the setup to be identical.

But this is how the drives show up, 2x M.2's and 6 USB drives.
HAL-9000-Disk-Management-Chia-Drives.jpg
 
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OK I suppose if you have multiple drives of the same size installed, it can be a pain. But SATA ports should be in order from 0-5. I'm not sure if M.2 would start as disk 0 or like disk 6. I believe my PCI-E storage device is disk 0 and goes up from there.

Speaking of that, if you have no M.2/PCIe storage attached, I don't know if that would make SATA start at disk0 or not. I don't have enough spare parts to swap around and test.

If your drives are different sizes then of course you can tell. From the install screen, you can also press Shift+F10 to bring up CMD and type in diskpart and then list disk.
OK I was not on my main PC at the time I said this. But my PCIe storage is showing as Disk 2 (my 2 SATA HDD's are disk 0 and 1 and plugged into Sata port 0 and 1.

So, with my system and Zepher It does seem that it starts with your SATA drives then goes to PCIe drives and is only numbered up to as many as you have installed.

As long as you know which port your drive is plugged into you should be able to know what disk you are installing on even if they are all the same size.
 
That's hilarious. Because you know, everyone likes pulling drives off their servers to install shit.
I'm not sure if you have ever worked on server hardware, but in almost all cases the OS (whether Windows, Linux, ESXi, etc) is installed on either flash media on the motherboard or on a RAID set which you pre-configure prior to OS installation screen. In almost no cases are the disk that you install the OS on the same as are there for storage since the performance characteristics of the disk are going to be different thus you have purchased different drives. And even if it is for some reason, you don't need to have the RAID set configured for storage pre-OS install - so there's no confusion. It's really not any different than desktop for this purpose.

And again, I've already explained earlier in this thread how you can easily identify what drive you are installing to based on where it's plugged into the motherboard.
 
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I'm not sure if you have ever worked on server hardware, but in almost all cases the OS (whether Windows, Linux, ESXi, etc) is installed on either flash media on the motherboard or on a RAID set which you pre-configure prior to OS installation screen. In almost no cases are the disk that you install the OS on the same as are there for storage since the performance characteristics of the disk are going to be different thus you have purchased different drives. And even if it is for some reason, you don't need to have the RAID set configured for storage pre-OS install - so there's no confusion. It's really not any different than desktop for this purpose.

And again, I've already explained earlier in this thread how you can easily identify what drive you are installing to based on where it's plugged into the motherboard.
I have worked on server hardware but that's a decade or more ago. Back then there weren't embedded flash drives. Yes, you configure the raid naturally but having an OS install that doesn't let you choose what disk to use is just blatantly dumb. That means that in order to install the OS you'd have to pull your storage drives off in order to make sure the OS gets installed to the right array. Why someone would use Windows in a server is beyond me however.

Being able to identify the drive means nothing if and when the installer at no point gives you a chance to choose the drive.
 
I have worked on server hardware but that's a decade or more ago. Back then there weren't embedded flash drives. Yes, you configure the raid naturally but having an OS install that doesn't let you choose what disk to use is just blatantly dumb. That means that in order to install the OS you'd have to pull your storage drives off in order to make sure the OS gets installed to the right array. Why someone would use Windows in a server is beyond me however.

Being able to identify the drive means nothing if and when the installer at no point gives you a chance to choose the drive.
This comment doesn't make since.

First, Windows is exceptionally popular for servers. ADDS, IIS, and Exchange are very popular.

Secondly, the installer does let you choose which drive to install on ... so what are you talking about?

Here's some random Internet picture that clearly shows multiple drives. If you don't like the partitions you just click on them and delete, or hit shift+f10 and bring up diskpart to select and clean them (preferred).

wuj9r.jpg
 
This comment doesn't make since.

First, Windows is exceptionally popular for servers. ADDS, IIS, and Exchange are very popular.

Secondly, the installer does let you choose which drive to install on ... so what are you talking about?

Here's some random Internet picture that clearly shows multiple drives. If you don't like the partitions you just click on them and delete, or hit shift+f10 and bring up diskpart to select and clean them (preferred).

View attachment 376896
ADDS, IIS and Exchange are popular mostly with small busineses that aren't able to make informed decisions. And even though you "get to choose" the drive to install on, Windows will still place the boot sector to a drive of it's own choosing transparently to the user.
 
Does everyone yank out their NVMEs before a new install? It's huge hassle to do when they're attached to the mobo. MS still doesn't have a clue about proper partition management during installation. They should really take a page from Linux distro installers & macOS.
 
Does everyone yank out their NVMEs before a new install? It's huge hassle to do when they're attached to the mobo. MS still doesn't have a clue about proper partition management during installation. They should really take a page from Linux distro installers & macOS.
Nope it is a pain in the ass specifically if you have to red ue the heatsink on it!
 
So what do you type once you get to the command prompt?
"diskpart" or something else?
yeah, and then you select the disk and clean it, like the old school way.

Does everyone yank out their NVMEs before a new install? It's huge hassle to do when they're attached to the mobo. MS still doesn't have a clue about proper partition management during installation. They should really take a page from Linux distro installers & macOS.
disable them in bios.
idk about linux lately but windows install disk management is waaay easier and more straight for than mac is.
 
yeah, and then you select the disk and clean it, like the old school way.


disable them in bios.
idk about linux lately but windows install disk management is waaay easier and more straight for than mac is.
Say what? Mac gives you a selection of drives in a simpliest possible form to choose. It couldn't get easyer than that. You can easily even install and boot from USB, something Windows can't do. Same goes for linux.
 
Say what? Mac gives you a selection of drives in a simpliest possible form to choose. It couldn't get easyer than that. You can easily even install and boot from USB, something Windows can't do. Same goes for linux.
yeah window is simpler. yeah mac could be easier. umm ok, that wasnt even mentioned but move those posts...
 
Say what? Mac gives you a selection of drives in a simpliest possible form to choose. It couldn't get easyer than that. You can easily even install and boot from USB, something Windows can't do. Same goes for linux.
Actually... with Rufus & other tools, you can install & boot from USB provided that the device is fast enough with I/O.
 
My old install stuck the EFI partition on my WD Black "D" drive
After migrating from the sata ssd to the m.2 nvme, I couldn't get the system to boot. Did the same steps to create an EFI partition on the NVME as I had done a year ago on a friends machine
I was upgrading but it didn't work for me. Messed with it for a few hours and then I just went ahead and did a fresh install and spent the next day installing all my programs, settings, and games.

That was the first time doing a fresh install on my main machine since August of 2009 when I initially installed Windows 7 on it.

View attachment 374678

Just noticed this!
I have so many external and internal drives now I'm on drive "U" what happens when I get to "Z" and I happen to add another drive?
I don't have a Drive "A" or "B" (yet) LoL
does the computer explode if I have more drives then letters?
 
Just noticed this!
I have so many external and internal drives now I'm on drive "U" what happens when I get to "Z" and I happen to add another drive?
I don't have a Drive "A" or "B" (yet) LoL
does the computer explode if I have more drives then letters?

When you run out of drive letters you have to start assigning mount points. I have one server like this. I use CoverCube Drivepool and it sees and uses these drive just fine but you won't see them in Explorer, don't know about other programs. MS should have dropped this drive letter nonsense a long time ago.
 
When you run out of drive letters you have to start assigning mount points. I have one server like this. I use CoverCube Drivepool and it sees and uses these drive just fine but you won't see them in Explorer, don't know about other programs. MS should have dropped this drive letter nonsense a long time ago.
if you have more than 24 drives, you can handle setting mount points.
 
Just noticed this!
I have so many external and internal drives now I'm on drive "U" what happens when I get to "Z" and I happen to add another drive?
I don't have a Drive "A" or "B" (yet) LoL
does the computer explode if I have more drives then letters?
That's a whole lot of porn.
 
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