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Can I install the Win 10 Install Media to a separate partition on the same HDD?

Nathanpete
By Nathanpete
in Windows
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Long story short: Just built my new PC, I don't have a external device with the windows 10 installation media on it, or at least one that my mobo wants to work with. 

What I do have:

  • A blank M.2 where I want to install Windows
  • A 16GB MP3 player with a USB 2.0 cable, I have already wiped it and am using the Win 10 Media Creation Tool on it as I type this. 
  • An old laptop HDD that still has windows and old files on it. I don't need the files, but I am currently using it as my boot drive because it already has windows on it. I am writing this post from that old HDD plugged into a SATA port on my new desktop I just built. 
  • A old alienware I just put a brand new SSD in. The laptop hard drive I just mentioned was previously in this Alienware laptop. It is a totally usable, and old, alienware, but it can only accept external media via USB
    • Being a laptop it only has 1 SATA port. 

What I don't have:

  • Any other PC or laptop capable of running the win 10 media installation tool. All I have is a Chromebook from work and the IT team made it so that all external USB storage is READ ONLY. I can't change this. Attempting to may get me fired. Don't want to risk it. 
  • A USB to SATA cable. 

 

The MP3 player has a max transfer speed of like 6 Megabytes/Second, so it is taking forever for the Media Creation Tool to do its job. 

Additionally, the UEFI recognizes the MP3 player, but then when I attempt to boot with it #1 in the boot order it says "no bootable media found" Attempting to unplug and replug in the USB 2.0 cable causes the MP3 player to bring forward a confirmation screen asking whether to 'charge and transfer' or 'charge and play music.' This screen only appears when it has been unplugged for more than a second. A split second power loss with stop all transfers immediatly, but it will resume charging, and it won't ask to continue a transfer. I think this is why I am struggling to use it as a boot media. 

 

My current plan is to copy all of the files from the MP3 player after the media creation tool is done to a new 16GB partition I just made on this laptop HDD (drive letter B:). But 😄 still has a completely fine Windows 10 on it. 

 

Would this plan work, and would I have to go and change B: to the active partition? I know this very last part involves a lot of risks, including making the HDD unbootable if the plan fails, but I am hoping that I can safely restart and get into the Windows Installation Media. 

 

If there is any other way to do this with an active Win 10 drive, a MP3 player, and my M.2 drive, please tell me. 

 

Edit: I have just learned about the option to Mount the Windows 10 .ISO from windows explorer, and that actually seems like a good option, as long as it allows me to select the M.2 SSD as the location to install rather than the HDD it is running from.  https://www.indexofapps.com/how-to-install-windows-10-from-internal-hard-drive-partition

Fuck you scalpers, fuck you scammers, fuck all of you jerks that charge way too much to tech-illiterate people. 

Unless I say I am speaking from experience or can confirm my expertise, assume it is an educated guess.

Current setup: Ryzen 5 3600, MSI MPG B550, 2x8GB DDR4-3200, RX 5600 XT (+120 core, +320 Mem), 1TB WD SN550, 1TB Team MP33, 2TB Seagate Barracuda Compute, 500GB Samsung 860 Evo, Corsair 4000D Airflow, 650W 80+ Gold. Razer peripherals. 

Also have a Alienware Alpha R1: i3-4170T, GTX 860M (≈ a 750 Ti). 2x4GB DDR3L-1600, Crucial MX500

My past and current projects: VR Flight Sim: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=dG38Jx (Done!)

A do it all server for educational use: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=vmmNcf (Cancelled)

Replacement of my friend's PC nicknamed Donkey, going from 2nd gen i5 to Zen+ R5: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=WmsW4D (Done!)

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Posted (edited)

I am very well versed in installing windows, as I have done it on many old systems in the past, and I could answer your question to the best of my knowledge, but did you say you were running an old copy of windows 10, and to be clear, did you say it was on a drive hooked up to, and running on your new pc??? 

 

If all that is true, why can't you just clone the drive then run a windows refresh(reinstall) operation on the new m.2 drive???  You can either reset settings or the whole system, back to factory defaults... (Think recovery partition, but built directly into the windows partition) 

 

 

As long as you don't do anything freaky to save HDD space like slimming the OS down, it should work just fine... Also, if for some reason you can't do that, just burn a dvd and do a fresh install onto a drive in the laptop you were mentioning, assuming it runs windows, then take the fresh install, and clone it over as specified earlier, then you'd be set... So long as you have a cheap windows 10 pro license of course, or home, if you're into the home version... Any more information needed, I will gladly give...

Edited by Wiebenor
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Well I am not well versed at all in disk cloning software, and the disk being cloned is littered with drivers when the HDD was used in an Intel+Nvidia laptop and a all AMD PC, so that could be a real mess to clean up. Unless the disk cloning software has an option to ignore such things. 

 

I have edited my original post because I found a blog explaining how to do pretty much exactly what I wanted by mounting the Win 10 ISO as a virtual DVD. Can you read that and confirm if that is legitimate/feasible/what I want?

 

And I have not done anything freaky to the old HDD. It was not mine, it was my dads, and he was not tech literate enough to do anything to system files except what CCleaner would do. 

Fuck you scalpers, fuck you scammers, fuck all of you jerks that charge way too much to tech-illiterate people. 

Unless I say I am speaking from experience or can confirm my expertise, assume it is an educated guess.

Current setup: Ryzen 5 3600, MSI MPG B550, 2x8GB DDR4-3200, RX 5600 XT (+120 core, +320 Mem), 1TB WD SN550, 1TB Team MP33, 2TB Seagate Barracuda Compute, 500GB Samsung 860 Evo, Corsair 4000D Airflow, 650W 80+ Gold. Razer peripherals. 

Also have a Alienware Alpha R1: i3-4170T, GTX 860M (≈ a 750 Ti). 2x4GB DDR3L-1600, Crucial MX500

My past and current projects: VR Flight Sim: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=dG38Jx (Done!)

A do it all server for educational use: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=vmmNcf (Cancelled)

Replacement of my friend's PC nicknamed Donkey, going from 2nd gen i5 to Zen+ R5: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=WmsW4D (Done!)

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17 minutes ago, Wiebenor said:

I am very well versed in installing windows, as I have done it on many old systems in the past, and I could answer your question to the best of my knowledge, but did you say you were running an old copy of windows 10, and to be clear, did you say it was on a drive hooked up to, and running on your new pc??? 

 

If all that is true, why can't you just clone the drive then run a windows refresh(reinstall) operation on the new m.2 drive???  You can either reset settings or the whole system, back to factory defaults... (Think recovery partition, but built directly into the windows partition) 

 

 

As long as you don't do anything freaky to save HDD space like slimming the OS down, it should work just fine... Also, if for some reason you can't do that, just burn a dvd and do a fresh install onto a drive in the laptop you were mentioning, assuming it runs windows, then take the fresh install, and clone it over as specified earlier, then you'd be set... So long as you have a cheap windows 10 pro license of course, or home, if you're into the home version... Any more information needed, I will gladly give...

Ok so I gave myself like 4 different options for my motherboard to choose from to boot, I have no clue which one it went with, but I just rebooted into the Windows 10 Setup. If all goes well I will mark this post as answered, even if you ultimately weren't the one to give a idea that worked. 

Fuck you scalpers, fuck you scammers, fuck all of you jerks that charge way too much to tech-illiterate people. 

Unless I say I am speaking from experience or can confirm my expertise, assume it is an educated guess.

Current setup: Ryzen 5 3600, MSI MPG B550, 2x8GB DDR4-3200, RX 5600 XT (+120 core, +320 Mem), 1TB WD SN550, 1TB Team MP33, 2TB Seagate Barracuda Compute, 500GB Samsung 860 Evo, Corsair 4000D Airflow, 650W 80+ Gold. Razer peripherals. 

Also have a Alienware Alpha R1: i3-4170T, GTX 860M (≈ a 750 Ti). 2x4GB DDR3L-1600, Crucial MX500

My past and current projects: VR Flight Sim: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=dG38Jx (Done!)

A do it all server for educational use: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=vmmNcf (Cancelled)

Replacement of my friend's PC nicknamed Donkey, going from 2nd gen i5 to Zen+ R5: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=WmsW4D (Done!)

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Posted (edited)

Ok... Just for reference, in cloning, drivers don't matter that much, as long as you refresh (reset) it, after cloning, if it's currently working... Another thing that not creating a recovery partition does, is to save that space that usually, in windows 10, is not required, since as I said, it's built in usually... Also, cloning is easy, especially an app like minitool partition wizard, makes things easy by using wizards... Also, I didn't see a link for the instructions you wanted me to read, but maybe I missed them... Note that I'm not saying that you are creating a recovery partition, because from what I can tell, you're not...

Edited by Wiebenor
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Sorry, I underlined my edit to draw attention to it, but then hyperlinks are also automatically underlined, so skinning over it you couldn't see it, bc it looked like normal text. I will fix it, but for now here it is: https://www.indexofapps.com/how-to-install-windows-10-from-internal-hard-drive-partition

Fuck you scalpers, fuck you scammers, fuck all of you jerks that charge way too much to tech-illiterate people. 

Unless I say I am speaking from experience or can confirm my expertise, assume it is an educated guess.

Current setup: Ryzen 5 3600, MSI MPG B550, 2x8GB DDR4-3200, RX 5600 XT (+120 core, +320 Mem), 1TB WD SN550, 1TB Team MP33, 2TB Seagate Barracuda Compute, 500GB Samsung 860 Evo, Corsair 4000D Airflow, 650W 80+ Gold. Razer peripherals. 

Also have a Alienware Alpha R1: i3-4170T, GTX 860M (≈ a 750 Ti). 2x4GB DDR3L-1600, Crucial MX500

My past and current projects: VR Flight Sim: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=dG38Jx (Done!)

A do it all server for educational use: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=vmmNcf (Cancelled)

Replacement of my friend's PC nicknamed Donkey, going from 2nd gen i5 to Zen+ R5: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=WmsW4D (Done!)

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Ok, so after a quick scan of the different types of installs, the type I'm referring to, would be the one marked #2, after having it on the new drive, just in case I was confusing... There are better ways to do an install on a pc without cd/dvd drives, specifically, you want to have a USB drive handy, and you should ONLY use a thumb drive, if you want to be technical... In some cases Sd-card readers plugged into your motherboard would work, but not everyone has one built in, nor do they all work, which is why I specifically mention only using thumb drives(and no, most mp3 players won't work, because they just won't... it's a stupid design, but I didn't design mp3 players)

Edited by Wiebenor
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Oh yeah I absolutely know this. I am just not at home right now, left my drive at home, and it is too far away for me to bother getting it. And where I am at currently the only USB thumb drive I can find has extremely confidential medical information on it that I am not to touch. 

Fuck you scalpers, fuck you scammers, fuck all of you jerks that charge way too much to tech-illiterate people. 

Unless I say I am speaking from experience or can confirm my expertise, assume it is an educated guess.

Current setup: Ryzen 5 3600, MSI MPG B550, 2x8GB DDR4-3200, RX 5600 XT (+120 core, +320 Mem), 1TB WD SN550, 1TB Team MP33, 2TB Seagate Barracuda Compute, 500GB Samsung 860 Evo, Corsair 4000D Airflow, 650W 80+ Gold. Razer peripherals. 

Also have a Alienware Alpha R1: i3-4170T, GTX 860M (≈ a 750 Ti). 2x4GB DDR3L-1600, Crucial MX500

My past and current projects: VR Flight Sim: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=dG38Jx (Done!)

A do it all server for educational use: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=vmmNcf (Cancelled)

Replacement of my friend's PC nicknamed Donkey, going from 2nd gen i5 to Zen+ R5: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=WmsW4D (Done!)

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Ah... I have a USB drive in my ford focus, so I can listen to music offline without ads, and if I ever need an extra USB device and don't have one I would gladly wipe my music drive specifically for that... I'm not saying you do, but still, it's something I don't mind doing... If there's one thing I hate, it's the fact that in this day and age, where it's getting VERY hard to find a case(from a good quality manufacturer) that has CD-DRIVE support, they still send dvd's with their products... You would think that whether you're putting a new motherboard in, or putting a new graphics card into an older system, the one thing you can be almost guaranteed of, is the fact that you'll have USB... I bought a USB based drive for my new system for just that purpose, actually, since my case doesn't support a built in DVD drive 

Edited by Wiebenor
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I did the exact same thing, I had about 10GB of music on my MP3 player because it lasts so much longer than my phone. I wiped it (I backup all my music to OneDrive just in case) and did the windows 10 media creation tool on it, but my mobo would not recognize it as boot media, but just a storage drive. 

Fuck you scalpers, fuck you scammers, fuck all of you jerks that charge way too much to tech-illiterate people. 

Unless I say I am speaking from experience or can confirm my expertise, assume it is an educated guess.

Current setup: Ryzen 5 3600, MSI MPG B550, 2x8GB DDR4-3200, RX 5600 XT (+120 core, +320 Mem), 1TB WD SN550, 1TB Team MP33, 2TB Seagate Barracuda Compute, 500GB Samsung 860 Evo, Corsair 4000D Airflow, 650W 80+ Gold. Razer peripherals. 

Also have a Alienware Alpha R1: i3-4170T, GTX 860M (≈ a 750 Ti). 2x4GB DDR3L-1600, Crucial MX500

My past and current projects: VR Flight Sim: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=dG38Jx (Done!)

A do it all server for educational use: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=vmmNcf (Cancelled)

Replacement of my friend's PC nicknamed Donkey, going from 2nd gen i5 to Zen+ R5: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=WmsW4D (Done!)

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And that's why I don't use ANY drive that is also an mp3 player for booting... You never know if it'll work... Of course, you did have USB boot enabled in BIOS right??? I don't mean to sound like I know it all, I just have had that happen before...

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It pulled up as an option in the boot order, so I assume so. I am new to the MSI UEFI, only really familiar with Asus, so maybe I missed the setting. 

Fuck you scalpers, fuck you scammers, fuck all of you jerks that charge way too much to tech-illiterate people. 

Unless I say I am speaking from experience or can confirm my expertise, assume it is an educated guess.

Current setup: Ryzen 5 3600, MSI MPG B550, 2x8GB DDR4-3200, RX 5600 XT (+120 core, +320 Mem), 1TB WD SN550, 1TB Team MP33, 2TB Seagate Barracuda Compute, 500GB Samsung 860 Evo, Corsair 4000D Airflow, 650W 80+ Gold. Razer peripherals. 

Also have a Alienware Alpha R1: i3-4170T, GTX 860M (≈ a 750 Ti). 2x4GB DDR3L-1600, Crucial MX500

My past and current projects: VR Flight Sim: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=dG38Jx (Done!)

A do it all server for educational use: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=vmmNcf (Cancelled)

Replacement of my friend's PC nicknamed Donkey, going from 2nd gen i5 to Zen+ R5: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=WmsW4D (Done!)

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24 minutes ago, Nathanpete said:

It pulled up as an option in the boot order, so I assume so. I am new to the MSI UEFI, only really familiar with Asus, so maybe I missed the setting. 

As long as you have the uefi set to legacy you can "boot anything, from anything" or very nearly so, but if you don't then it has to be uefi based, or would a better term be, compliant??? Most new windows installers should be uefi compatible, but who knows if yours is...

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On 3/7/2021 at 1:38 AM, Wiebenor said:

As long as you have the uefi set to legacy you can "boot anything, from anything" or very nearly so, but if you don't then it has to be uefi based, or would a better term be, compliant??? Most new windows installers should be uefi compatible, but who knows if yours is...

Hi there, sorry for the late reply, I have two different places I stay at, and at the moment my PC is sitting at my secondary home where at least for the next couple weeks I will only be staying during weekends. So that means I can't fix anything until I return tomorrow or Saturday. When I left I pressed update and restart, but I forgot that my remote access software only starts up when the computer is logged in. So it restarted, I left, and it hasn't been logged in yet.

 

Anyway, Windows boots up, but with some strange problems. First: The M.2 SSD will not appear in the boot order unless it is set to UEFI and not Legacy. (My board does not have a UEFI+Legacy option), however Windows will now only boot up if the laptop HDD is plugged in and set above the SSD in the boot order. Both drives have Windows 20H2 installed. Anyway, it boots into the HDD first, but the HDD's W10 recognizes two different installs, one on itself, and one on the SSD. IDK what the wording is, but the HDD's W10 is on something along the lines of "Partition 2," and the SSD's is on "Partition 5." I have changed the default to Partition 5 and set the auto-select timer to 5 seconds. 

 

The HDD does have 4 partitions: Windows 10, recovery, and then two different ways to use the Windows 10 Installer (one is a bootable ISO virtual disk, the other is a bootable partition with all the contents of the Windows 10 ISO unpacked into it). The SSD has only one partition, containing W10 Home, and it is taking up all of the allocated space minus overprovisioning. 

 

Unplugging the HDD or putting the SSD higher in the boot order causes a "No Bootable Media Found" error, and the "Plug in the bootable media and press any key" doesn't work because plugging it back in on this screen and pressing a button does nothing, just repeats the same error on the next line in the text-based UI.  (Y' know, generic mobo boot problem) IDK if I tested this with it both above and below in the boot order, but this behavior is not normal. 

 

Basically, my boot times are now about 15 seconds instead of like 2 because (I think) the mobo is failing to recognize the SSD as containing bootable media, but then Windows is able to recognize itself on a different drive, and it asks me to select which one to boot into. After learning which partition was which, I always select 5 if I am there before the auto-select.

I have no clue why it doesn't attempt to boot into the HDD when it is plugged in and 2nd in boot order, it just fails at the SSD and stops. From what I know about the boot order, this is not supposed to happen. 

Fuck you scalpers, fuck you scammers, fuck all of you jerks that charge way too much to tech-illiterate people. 

Unless I say I am speaking from experience or can confirm my expertise, assume it is an educated guess.

Current setup: Ryzen 5 3600, MSI MPG B550, 2x8GB DDR4-3200, RX 5600 XT (+120 core, +320 Mem), 1TB WD SN550, 1TB Team MP33, 2TB Seagate Barracuda Compute, 500GB Samsung 860 Evo, Corsair 4000D Airflow, 650W 80+ Gold. Razer peripherals. 

Also have a Alienware Alpha R1: i3-4170T, GTX 860M (≈ a 750 Ti). 2x4GB DDR3L-1600, Crucial MX500

My past and current projects: VR Flight Sim: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=dG38Jx (Done!)

A do it all server for educational use: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=vmmNcf (Cancelled)

Replacement of my friend's PC nicknamed Donkey, going from 2nd gen i5 to Zen+ R5: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=WmsW4D (Done!)

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On 3/7/2021 at 1:38 AM, Wiebenor said:

As long as you have the uefi set to legacy you can "boot anything, from anything" or very nearly so, but if you don't then it has to be uefi based, or would a better term be, compliant??? Most new windows installers should be uefi compatible, but who knows if yours is...

Actually, now that I think about it, I think the UEFI option is really UEFI+Legacy and there is no strictly UEFI option. You can drag and drop drive options in the MSI BIOS/UEFI, with options including UEFI drives, legacy drives, UEFI USB drives, Legacy USB drives, booting from an ethernet drive (both UEFI and Legacy, probably over PXE) and even a USB floppy drive. There is like 12 different items to rearrange in UEFI, in Legacy there is like 5. I forget if the HDD appears as UEFI or Legacy, but I know the M.2 appears only as a UEFI hard drive. 

 

I always have the UEFI and Legacy USB drives as #1 and #2 in the boot order, because that is what I learned in my IT class, but basically:

  • #3 HDD
  • #4 M.2
  • = Works, but boots in HDD then prompts to boot into a partition on the SSD. 

and 

  • #3 M.2
  • #4 HDD
  • = Fails to boot

and 

  • #3 M.2
  • #4 HDD (not plugged in)
  • = Fails to boot

and 

  • #3 HDD (not plugged in)
  • #4 M.2
  • = Fails to boot

Fuck you scalpers, fuck you scammers, fuck all of you jerks that charge way too much to tech-illiterate people. 

Unless I say I am speaking from experience or can confirm my expertise, assume it is an educated guess.

Current setup: Ryzen 5 3600, MSI MPG B550, 2x8GB DDR4-3200, RX 5600 XT (+120 core, +320 Mem), 1TB WD SN550, 1TB Team MP33, 2TB Seagate Barracuda Compute, 500GB Samsung 860 Evo, Corsair 4000D Airflow, 650W 80+ Gold. Razer peripherals. 

Also have a Alienware Alpha R1: i3-4170T, GTX 860M (≈ a 750 Ti). 2x4GB DDR3L-1600, Crucial MX500

My past and current projects: VR Flight Sim: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=dG38Jx (Done!)

A do it all server for educational use: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=vmmNcf (Cancelled)

Replacement of my friend's PC nicknamed Donkey, going from 2nd gen i5 to Zen+ R5: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/nathanpete/saved/#view=WmsW4D (Done!)

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