Reinstalling Windows 10 on dual boot system

[underfl0w]

Hi all,

I want to do a fresh install of Windows 10 (from a bootable USB stick) on my Windows assigned SSD as it's becoming a little cluttered and slow. I have High Sierra installed on a second SSD and two HDD's (each acting as storage for both respective OS's).

I'm worried that when I perform the clean Windows 10 install that the installer might be confused as to what drive to install to. I am wondering if I will need to unplug the High Sierra SSD and both storage HDD's so as not to confuse the Windows 10 installer, or can I just leave them plugged in?

Hardware:

Motherboard: MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon
CPU: Intel i7 6700K
GPU: MSI GTX 1070 8GB
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB DDR4
SSD: 1x Samsung 970 EVO 256GB M.2 SSD (Windows 10 Boot drive) and 1x Samsung 870 PRO 256GB SATA SSD (macOS Boot drive)
HDD: 2x Seagate Barracuda 4TB HDD @7200RPM
PSU: EVGA SuperNova G2 1000W

 

[P1LGRIM]

Moved to Multi Booting.

 

[theruck]

it is best to unplug the Sierra SSD while installing windows then after all is done just select the Sierra SSD to be the first boot drive. Clover boot loader will detect the windows install and you will be able to select the windows EFI partition to boot the windows or keep the default to boot OSX
if you need to change the defaults just change it later in clover.config using clover configurator

 

[Going Bald]

Hi all,

I want to do a fresh install of Windows 10 (from a bootable USB stick) on my Windows assigned SSD as it's becoming a little cluttered and slow. I have High Sierra installed on a second SSD and two HDD's (each acting as storage for both respective OS's).

I'm worried that when I perform the clean Windows 10 install that the installer might be confused as to what drive to install to. I am wondering if I will need to unplug the High Sierra SSD and both storage HDD's so as not to confuse the Windows 10 installer, or can I just leave them plugged in?

Hardware:

Motherboard: MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon
CPU: Intel i7 6700K
GPU: MSI GTX 1070 8GB
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB DDR4
SSD: 1x Samsung 970 EVO 256GB M.2 SSD (Windows 10 Boot drive) and 1x Samsung 870 PRO 256GB SATA SSD (macOS Boot drive)
HDD: 2x Seagate Barracuda 4TB HDD @7200RPM
PSU: EVGA SuperNova G2 1000W

Granted best practice is to disconnect all other drives or disable the SATA ports where the drives are connected, you can install over the existing Win10 and leave the other drives connected.
It depends somewhat on your hardware connections and what method you choose to do the install.
When you are in Windows run the disk management tool and look at the drives listed. Is the Win10 drive the first listed in both panes, top and bottom? If yes, you are in luck. You have a 90% chance that the USB Win10 installer will not install any files on the other drives.
Another method is to use the repair function to refresh Win10. You have the option to re-install Win10 and keep all existing user files and folders and your 3rd party apps or you can do a complete clean install and lose all 3rd party apps and any files you have failed to backup. The downside to this is that you will have to re-install all of your 3rd party apps and set up your users again, then restore any files/folders you want to have back on your system. The benefit is that with a clean install you can wipe and zero the drive with the "clean all" command in diskpart utility and reformat the drive as if fresh from the factory. You do not want to do this very often as there is a limit to the number or writes possible on SSDs.