I have two identical 2Tb m.2 NVMe drives in the box, and am going to clone the main drive to the 2nd drive.  The main drive contains P3D and MSFS, and their addons, and a few other programs and games.  The usual recommendation is to remove the cloned drive physically prior to booting after the cloning operation.  I see it is possible in the BIOS on my MSI motherboard to disable any drives.  So my question is, will it be 'safe' to disable the cloned drive in the BIOS, or the main drive when the clone is preferred to boot to, instead of physically removing the 2nd m.2 drive?

Thanks! 

 

Maybe I'm not understanding what you want to do, but why not make the cloned drive the lowest priority in your boot order list in the BIOS? It will still show up in Windows in case you need it for something other than backup purposes. Disabling the drive should work also.

I think it has to do w/ things like assigned drive letters, which are going to change according to which clone boots, and presumably this can cause issues.  The truth is I already had done this when I built the machine a year ago, and used EasyBCD to create the GUI boot menu to go to either drive.  It worked flawlessly.  Then I got into a weird problem w/ my Saitek Yoke recently:   in order to get its ailerons centered one has to disconnect/reconnect it.  I bought a USB switch to do this, and it works great, at least until you turn it off/on while you're in one of the sims, or have just shut down the sim.  I've accidently done this maybe 6 times now, versus booting to Win 10 first, then turning the yoke on, THEN starting the sim.  I got BSOD several times, and the last one was today when I forgot to turn the yoke on right after boot up to center the thing on prior to starting the sim, so closed MSFS as I could tell during TO the ailerons with not centered. This time I got a BSOD that made the machine unbootable--worse than that, no POST at all!  I've seen comments in the error codes about IRQ problems, and other, and there is something that killed the EasyBCD loader in that maneuver of disc/reconn the yoke.  I thought my mainboard BIOS was hosed, etc etc, so disconnected both cloned drives, all USB connections, and finally thought to jumper the BIOS pins to clear it and got to POST and the BIOS screens again--YES!  So I'm loath to try this same approach again, in case there is something about the boot loader that is sensitive to this weird interplay w/ the USB yoke.  In the BIOS, I can see both drives, but only one Windows Boot Loader.   My sense is that both drives contain the same boot loader, and there is no way to choose both, only one.   Indeed when I booted up and that I changed drives, it appears I was on the same drive when I looked at Disk Manager in Win 10.  So I ended up removing the clone for now.  I only use it as an rapid total restore, and fortunately it's easy to get to with just removing the PC case panel and one screw.

Edited April 2, 20215 yr by Noel

Probably better to disconnect it.

A cloned drive will look to the system as a "duplicate" and it will be put offline..

 

1 hour ago, Bert Pieke said:

Probably better to disconnect it.

A cloned drive will look to the system as a "duplicate" and it will be put offline..

The other method did work fine as I say, but for reasons I don't understand the boot loader created by EasyBCD got corrupted more than once because of this issue with the yoke disconnecting/reconnecting at certain times, yet not others.

  I'm not sure what you mean by offline because I could boot to either drive, and could see and interact w/ the other drive.  I am just thinking perhaps there is something in particular as a vulnerability w/ this dual boot and the yoke issue, but that remains to be seen really.   Still, I don't use drive #2 other than as a full system restore on another piece of hardware so there is no downside to disconnecting it other than minor inconvenience, emphasis on minor.

Edited April 2, 20215 yr by Noel

14 hours ago, Noel said:

I'm not sure what you mean by offline because I could boot to either drive, and could see and interact w/ the other drive.  

I am no Windows expert, but I did recently clone my C drive, and found that I could not have the cloned drive active at the same time as the original. They had the "same signature" whatever that means.

You can disable the drive in the Admin functions.  A quick Google search will provide instructions.  I've successfully done this a number of times.

 

52 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

I am no Windows expert, but I did recently clone my C drive, and found that I could not have the cloned drive active at the same time as the original. They had the "same signature" whatever that means.

My setup process got a little wonky, I mean cloning and setting up a dual boot option, but it did work flawlessly since I assembled the machine a year ago.  So it is doable, but again for some reason my hardware conflict killed it to the point it wouldn't even POST!  I am now officially OCD in turning the yoke on AFTER Windows initializes to the desktop and before launching a sim, and if I forget I will go ahead and reboot and try again to get it right.  

46 minutes ago, DaveCT2003 said:

You can disable the drive in the Admin functions.  A quick Google search will provide instructions.  I've successfully done this a number of times.

 

Dave I did that quick search and didn't really get anything I would take a chance with, like using the commandline tool to change the drive's signature.  It's just easier to remove the drive and call it good since I absolutely don't use the cloned drive except as a solid easy restore if something gets unfixable, and that hardly happens these days anyway.  And all of this for P3D primarilly since it is a considerable hassle to install, addon and configure. 

Why not just remove the cloned drive and free up that spot for another M2 drive that you can use everyday?

19 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

Probably better to disconnect it.

+1² (what he said)
I have been cloning my primary drive monthly for now approaching 6 years.  I use my primary drive and two similarly sized SSDs.  I alternate the two clones, so the target SSD I use when I clone is at that point two months old.   Once I complete the cloning process I remove the clone from the system.  Should you leave it connected and experience a virus, malware, or ransomware you would likely lose it along with other drives in your system.  Would that not defeat the purpose of making clone in the first place?

Edited April 2, 20215 yr by fppilot

4 hours ago, Dave_YVR said:

Why not just remove the cloned drive and free up that spot for another M2 drive that you can use everyday?

Just have no need for more drive space is all.  I do have a couple of Samsung SATA3 SSDs I can use from my prior build that I only use to support a digital piano VST.  But really, I just don't need more drive space.  I could use a better GPU though 😰

Fair enough, I'd still probably remove it though just to keep it safe and have as a ready spare if needed.

Makes sense thanks all.

Cheers