Can I just swap NVMe SSDs between M.2 slots?

[MAXBattle]

My ASUS x570-Plus has two Gen 4 PCIe M.2 slots. Installed Win11 when I only had 1 SSD & it was in Slot 1 (x4 to CPU).  I later added a Gen 4 cache/scratch SSD in Slot 2, forgetting that its x4 goes through the chipset, so its performance is theoretically choked a little bit by the shared lanes.

 

This weekend at PAX, I was talking to ASUS and they said that I should've installed the boot SSD alone in M.2 Slot 2 and installed the OS.  Then, I could add the faster scratch SSD in M.2 Slot 1 to have optimal performance for both drives (since the boot SSD is Gen 3 and having it share lanes is less of a deal). I don't have to have the boot SSD in the first slot.

 

NOW, THE QUESTION... Instead of purging both drives and redoing all of the software installation, can I just swap the two M.2 drives?  Obviously, there's no OS on the scratch SSD.  Will windows just go check Slot 2 to boot?  Also, will this confuse or screw up Windows 11 Disk Management (drive letters, etc)?

[Oshino Shinobu]

Yeah, you can swap them no problem. You might have to re-arrange the boot order in the BIOS, but even that might not be required as a lot of boards will find the boot drive on their own.

 

EDIT: Windows doesn't care what slot the drives are in. It doesn't assign drive letters or manage them based on which slot they're in.

[Luka95]

When you turn on the pc as i understand it bios will "look" for os to boot, so if you have multiple ssd with diferent operating systems on them you should make order list to specify which os to boot by default, but if you have only one ssd with os on it, bios should find it and boot it with no problem at all, especialy with newer mobo like yours.. So to conclude, its not windows that is looking for slots to boot from, windows isnt even active in that stage, its bios that is active and looking for the os if there is one at all..

[MAXBattle]

23 hours ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Yeah, you can swap them no problem. You might have to re-arrange the boot order in the BIOS, but even that might not be required as a lot of boards will find the boot drive on their own.

 

EDIT: Windows doesn't care what slot the drives are in. It doesn't assign drive letters or manage them based on which slot they're in.

 

23 hours ago, Luka95 said:

When you turn on the pc as i understand it bios will "look" for os to boot, so if you have multiple ssd with diferent operating systems on them you should make order list to specify which os to boot by default, but if you have only one ssd with os on it, bios should find it and boot it with no problem at all, especialy with newer mobo like yours.. So to conclude, its not windows that is looking for slots to boot from, windows isnt even active in that stage, its bios that is active and looking for the os if there is one at all..

EXCELLENT!  You both have made my day!

 

Since all I'm doing is swapping slots (and maybe a BIOS setting), I'm thinking I might run drive benchmarks to see the difference in performance (if any) between the two configurations.  If there is a difference, it would seem like a good idea for an LTT video - especially with the new x670 motherboards having FOUR (4!) M.2 slots.  It's like IRQs all over again!