Installing another install of Win 10 to a different drive without affecting the original install?

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22 Sep 2016
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46
Hi,

I like to use other drives to install new releases of Windows 10 to so I can test them without losing my working setup.

Normally, I would just disconnect all drives except the one I want to install the new copy of Windows to, install, and then reconnect all the drives and use the UEFI BIOS boot menu to select the drive I want to boot from.

Since upgrading my PC, this has become much more difficult. The M.2 drive on my ASUS Crosshair VII is covered by a heat spreader and is in a small case so it's not a simple thing to just remove the drive...but it is made worse that I can't even disable the M.2 drive in BIOS. There is simply no way of doing this, which is odd.

When I have installed Windows to another drive with the M.2 drive still connected, whatever the Windows installer is doing to install on to the new drive, it totally borks the EFI boot partition on the original drive.

Does anyone know how I can install a second version of Windows in UEFI mode and it have no effect on any other drives and their EFI partitions? Or is there a way that once I install the new copy of Windows and boot into it, is there a way from there I can repair the EFI boot loader on the original drive?

Thanks
 
I backed up the drive with Acronis so I could restore the efi partition if it went wrong, which it did. However I couldn't actually get Windows to install at all unless the only drive that was plugged in was the target drive. I am guessing there is some logic that results in this being how it is, seems odd though.

In the end it was just easier to spend the 10 mins unplugging the m.2 and plugging it back in.

Thanks anyway guys!
 
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