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I just want to make sure I won't break things. So, basically, my old laptop decided to die a couple weeks back and so I promptly replaced it with a new one.

The problem is that I still have some valuable data for the University lying around and I failed to push recent changes to my github repo before everything died.

So now I want to extricate SSD (Samsung EVO 960) from the old laptop and temporarily insert it into the vacant m.2 slot in my new laptop.

Will the presence of Windows 10 on the second SSD cause any issues or conflicts? I'm not exactly sure how UEFI will react to this.

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    Not an answer to your question directly, but you can get a USB Hard Drive enclosure to pull your data off of. Something like this is cheap and effective: amazon.com/Sabrent-Tool-free-Enclosure-Optimized-EC-UASP/dp/…
    – WernerCD
    Apr 6, 2021 at 10:51
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    Should not be a problem. Just ensure that the boot selection points to the drive you actually want to start. But I did the same thing a while ago (with an HDD and an SSD with both windows), and it worked flawlessly
    – Hobbamok
    Apr 6, 2021 at 11:42
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    @WernerCD great idea, but it looks like theirs is an M.2, not SATA, so something like this would be more appropriate: amzn.to/3dGnS7P
    – Cody
    Apr 7, 2021 at 18:49
  • @Cody yeah, I should have amended my comment here with a pointer to the comment on the accepted answer as the same ideas are presented there (including a link to a random enclosure which would hold an m.2). not only didn't I read the answers before commenting but I also didn't circle back and fix my comment lol
    – WernerCD
    Apr 7, 2021 at 20:36

4 Answers 4

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Assuming a different Windows license (old Windows license, new machine with new Windows License), there is not any issue.

Still, for clarity for you and for the longer term, install, get your data in a reasonable time and then remove the drive or format it.

The reason is (a) the old license may not run properly on the new machine and (b) if it was OEM, the license is not portable anyway.

You should not have any issue.

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  • Some UEFI firmware throws a fit if it finds multiple EFI System partitions.
    – Ben Voigt
    Apr 8, 2021 at 21:07
  • Wording regarding OEM licenses is misleading: OEMs use a special OEM volume license key to activate Windows at the factory that is provided to them via a Microsoft contract; however, Microsoft requires OEMs to also provide a Windows CoA [Certificate of Authenticity] on all systems manufactured (IIRC, this has been legislated in the US), with the CoA's license key being transferable to a new motherboard like any other Windows license. (CoAs have two serials on them in small print, one usually starting with X, Microsoft will use to provide a new license key if the CoA is unreadable.)
    – JW0914
    Apr 25, 2021 at 14:25
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You will not have any issues. UEFI is set to boot from the first m.2 SSD. The computer will not attempt to boot from the new drive. Windows will boot from the original drive, it will see the new drive and assign it the next free drive letter. You will then be able to copy any data you need from it.

Of course, all of this is assuming you didnt use any sort of encryption on the drive or its files.

Alternatively, you could put the m.2 drive in a USB enclosure like this.

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    UEFI is set to boot from the first m.2 SSD. The computer will not attempt to boot from the new drive, why? Shouldn't the OP check this instead of assuming it? Apr 6, 2021 at 9:07
  • ahh added a comment of my own about a USB enclosure. glad to see I'm not the only one to think of it.
    – WernerCD
    Apr 6, 2021 at 10:53
  • Thanks a lot for youranswer. One thnig to note about the enclosure - it doesn't support nvme drives which my SSD is. Anyhow, I was just trying to make sure because back in the days MBR boot could find a lot of problems with my proposed setup and I havent been keping up to date enough.
    – NotAName
    Apr 6, 2021 at 11:45
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    @pavel many variations of SSD enclosures exist... here's a random one that does support NVME amazon.com/Enclosure-Adapter-Tool-Free-Thunderbolt-External/dp/…
    – WernerCD
    Apr 6, 2021 at 12:37
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    I was more concerned about the fact that fack in MBR age installing a drive that already had an OS on could lead to some difficulties, but thankfully this is past us
    – NotAName
    Apr 6, 2021 at 16:05
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UEFI, like BIOS, allows the user to choose which drive is the primary boot device. The boot partition on the 2nd device will be ignored. You can easily transfer data from the 2nd device to the new boot drive.

Be aware that Windows on the 2nd device will freak when you open the folders containing user data. It will know you are not the registered user and will attempt to block you from access to it. Your new administrator account will supersede the old one but will make the old account unusable if you decide to reuse the device as a boot drive. This will occur whether you install the drive internally or externally.

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    "Be aware that Windows on the 2nd device will freak when you open the folders containing user data." -- I think you meant to say "Windows on 1st device will freak when you open folders on 2nd device" .. Windows on 2nd device will be just lying there as executable / system files and have no control on the machine in any way.
    – Lukman
    Apr 7, 2021 at 0:54
  • > allows the user to choose which drive is the primary boot device In CSM (BIOS-compatibility) mode, yes. In native UEFI mode that's not quite the case: you're not choosing the drive but rather a specific boot entry which will include a volume GUID etc.. The only time you'd be picking at the drive level is if you're using the fallback boot.
    – Bob
    Apr 7, 2021 at 5:56
  • The difference is significant in that you'll likely have a Windows Boot Manager entry in a native UEFI boot environment, and this will always point to a specific volume/device as defined at the time the entry was added. You'd need to add a separate entry to boot from the other device (or use the fallback boot, which IIRC Windows does place into the ESP and will actually clobber other boot entries).
    – Bob
    Apr 7, 2021 at 5:58
  • @Bob If the 2nd drive was pulled from a BIOS motherboard, it can only boot with CSM mode enabled; however, CSM Mode should never be utilized outside of this, as its sole purpose was to allow the install of non-EFI bootable OSes until ~2017ish (all OSes supported EFI boot as of 2017ish and Windows has supported EFI boot since at least Win8) and choosing it will result in performance degradation since it forces UEFI, a 64bit firmware, to emulate BIOS' 16bit architecture within a 32bit environment (e.g. booting will go from ~10s to ~45s) - it is possible to convert a BIOS install to EFI boot
    – JW0914
    Apr 25, 2021 at 14:43
0

As long as you still boot from your current drive and only access to the second to read/write data, you shouldn't be annoyed. Be advised that booting from the second drive might not work ; I experienced difficulties with my new desktop when using my old drive (not booting or blue screen) and had to format/reinstall Win10 to get it to work properly.

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    Boot issues should never result in a reinstall since they can be corrected from WinPE/WinRE via BootRec and, in the case of UEFI if the EFI partition is corrupted, BcdBoot (see Step 5 in the last section of this answer)
    – JW0914
    Apr 25, 2021 at 14:33

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