Two Separate Drives and Win11 OS

[Friendly]

Don't leave yet. Your Used doesn't make sense.

Sorry, I was so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open Several years ago, I switched from Paragon HD Manager Business to Terabyte. Paragon became too commercialized, and while the annual subscription wasn’t an issue, the sudden implementation of online activation caused problems. As soon as you went offline, Paragon would revert to trial mode, and they couldn’t fix it for almost nine months. By the time they told me it was resolved, I had already discovered Terabyte and liked it much more than Paragon.

Anyway, off topic. I have two questions, Brian.
Once I get this working by following your guide, can the 860 and clean Windows 11 state be backed up and restored using IFW, as I frequently do after testing apps or starting projects from a clean Windows 11? Or will I need to repeat the same process we’re doing now?
For a while, I’ve been cloning Windows 11 from my main drive to a spare drive, and if I decide to start fresh, I just restore the saved image, and it’s done in under a minute, never had any issues.

Second question: when using a script to boot directly to BIOS and choose the drive, versus letting BootIt bring up the menu and selecting from there, are there any pros or cons besides convenience?
Thank you

[Friendly]

Friendly,

A few mistakes that can be corrected. When you clone an OS to another drive you should only copy the OS partition. Not copy the ESP and Recovery partitions. Having more than one ESP in a system can lead to bizarre situations.

If it was my computer I'd uninstall BIU and use the BIU boot media to delete each partition on the 860 SSD except for the 16 MiB MSR. Restart and install BIU. You should then see a single item in the Boot Menu and Win11 should boot from the menu.

If I restored the drive from an image with all three partitions, as I’ve been doing thus far, could that cause issues? If so, would it be due to BootIt UEFI and how it manages partitions and potential conflicts, or a Windows related problem? I’ve done it this way for years without ever encountering any problems. Is there an easy, step-by-step method you could guide me to add the 860 OS to the BootIt menu?
Thanks for taking the time to educate me on that:)

[Brian K]

Friendly,

You only have to do the BIU copy once. Then just use IFW for backup/restore as you have been using. The BIU copy process will automatically create a Boot Item for the copied Win11 on the 860 drive. It's an excellent procedure.

To backup your 8100 drive I suggest a multi-partition backup of 4 partitions with IFW. MSR, ESP, Win11 and RE. When restoring, do a multi-partition restore with IFW. All partitions at the same time. To backup the 860 drive you only need to do a single partition backup. The copied Win11 partition. To restore, do a single partition restore.

I've suggested a Win11 partition size of 100000 MiB. That's what I use. This size will fit on your 860 drive. But after the copy you can make Win11 any size you like. If you would like to have 100 movies on the 8100 drive, I'd put them in a data partition and not backup/restore this partition with the 4 partition backup mentioned above. This saves time. You don't need to restore several TB of movies when you just want to restore Windows.

When BIU was first released I inadvertently had several ESPs. This did cause weird issues when installing further Windows OS. If you had ten OS on your 8100 drive and you also had ten other drives, each with ten OS, you only need one ESP with BIU installed.

I never boot OS from the BIOS. If you have multiple OS there is no way of knowing which OS is which in the BIOS. I have about 20 OS and most have the same name in the BIOS.

Is the Used Space on your 8100 drive 29820 MiB?

[Friendly]

I got everything working by following the instructions, and I’m really enjoying the BootIt Menu. Renaming my drives for easy identification has been great.
There are a few things I wish worked differently, or maybe they can, but I’m not sure. My 860 Pro is 240GB, which is small but fine for installing test apps, while my main SN is 2TB. During the Windows 11 install, I avoid resizing since I’m unsure what I might add later, so I prefer having extra space.

To make it work, I had to shrink the SN to match the 860’s size, and while I can resize the SN back, the 860 stays at full capacity, which limits me. Restoring the 860 will probably need another workaround. I’d love to keep my current setup with these two nice boot menus but still restore from an image like before, just adding the 860 to the boot menu to avoid size limits and allow quick restores.

While renaming drives, I also noticed there’s no way to hide them from each other. And I’m still puzzled why having BootIt installed makes Edge keep reverting to Bing as the search engine no matter what I do.
Is there way to work around for the few things I have mentioned?
Thank you Brian for a such wonderful help.

[Friendly]

Ohh I posted after you responded

[Friendly]

You have a great way of explaining things, which makes a huge difference in how easy or difficult it is to follow instructions. I’ll give everything another try from scratch. You’ve helped and taught me so much about using BottIt, awesome. I’ll check back in soon.

[Brian K]

To hide partitions.

Boot Edit, select Win11 on the 8100. Click Edit
In GPT Details for HD 1
Select Win11 (the copy), press Spacebar on the keyboard. You now see Hide next to the partition. Click OK. OK again.

Boot Edit, select Win11 (the copy) on the 860. Click Edit
In GPT Details for HD 0
Select Win11 (the original), press Spacebar on the keyboard. You now see Hide next to the partition. Click OK. OK again.

[Brian K]

When doing the copy, don't forget to...

Put a tick in Add to Boot Menu. This is essential.

But I think you did remember. If you don't do this a Boot Item won't be created.

[Friendly]

Thanks to your guidance, I now have a much clearer understanding of how it works. The BootIt menu is great. I’ll redo everything, then restore my SN8100 to its original partition size, back it up the 860, and try restoring it to see how it goes. If I decide to install Windows 11 on the 860 instead of copying it, how is the boot menu added does it get created automatically and I just have to rename it or is there another way to proceed to get there.

One thing you not mentioning the EDGE is poke about?

[Brian K]

I don't know the answer to Edge/Bing. See if it still happens after you hide the non booting OS.

If you want to install Win11 on the 860 drive there is a special procedure to use. Let's talk about it later. Personally, I'd just use your copy. It's easier.
If you do install Win11 to the 860, a Boot Item will be created, automatically.