How To Change Boot Drive: 2 Easy Methods For You

There may sometimes be when you may feel the urge to change your boot drive but do not have any knowledge regarding the procedure of how to change boot drive. So, let us discuss several procedures of how to change boot drive and work more effectively. However, before going to that part, let us know what the boot drive is.

What is a boot drive?

The boot drive of your system is the drive that contains the operating system, and hence, it is also known as the system drive. To start, your computer needs to be booted through UEFI/BIOS. This UEFI/BIOS is a specific program that is solidified on the chip of the ROM of your computer motherboard, which stores the most crucial and basic output and input programs of the computer, the self-start program of the system, and the self-check program after the power is on.

In most cases, HDD is used to store the operating system, but some users use SSD instead of HDD for better performance. Like every time your computer starts, the UEFI/BIOS loads first and tells your computer which drives to use for starting Windows, so if you are booting from a new drive, you need to change the boot order of that new drive first of all. For this, you should know the procedure of how to change boot drive.

The methods of how to change boot drive

After knowing the reason why you need to know the procedure of how to change boot drive, you may wish to know the steps of how to change boot drive on Windows 10 and 11. The method below works for Dell, ASUS, Samsung, MSI, etc. So, you can follow the steps mentioned below:

First of all, you need to start the computer, and after the screen appears, follow the prompts on your screen (usually ESC, DEL, F1, F2, F8, F9, F10, F11, etc.) to enter the UEFI or BIOS settings. After that, you can see the two different interfaces, which are:

1. BIOS interface

In the BIOS menu, you need to press the arrow key on your keyboard to get to the “Boot” tab, and then you need to change the boot order settings to make a new bot drive your first boot drive.

After that, follow the instructions in the BIOS utility to navigate to the tab showing “Exit” and select the option “Exit Saving Changes” to save the changes you have done to your boot order.

2. UEFI interface

In the menu of UEFI, you can directly use your mouse to click the new hard drive that needs boot priority. After that, you need to follow the prompts to save and exit.

Important points to note:

1. If you still could not boot your computer from the destination disk, even after changing the boot sequence, the possibility is that the computer is not in the right boot mode.
2. If your boot drive is a GPT disk, you should confirm that your computer’s motherboard supports UEFI boot mode and change it to UEFI/EFI boot mode.

Before performing the procedure of how to change boot drive, you should first install the OS on the new drive. Now, let us discuss the procedures of how to change boot drive.

Method 1 of how to change boot drive

Migrating the OS to HDD/SSD

You can use a professional disk partition manager to migrate your OS to HDD/SSD. Most of those partition managers have no difficult operation and can suit all types of Windows users. Thus, you can manage your partitions or discs easily and quickly.

With those types of software, you can migrate your OS to another disk without the fear of losing data because those will still be on the boot drive. Along with OS migration, some types of software also support cloning a hard drive to another one, completing mutual conversion between GPT and MBR, allocating free space, and many more.

So, let us discuss the steps of how to change boot drive.

1. First, you should install a partition manager software like AOMEI Partition Assistant and select the option “Migrate OS to SSD” under the column “Wizards.”
2. Next, choose destination SSD/HDD and click on “Next.”
3. Now, you can resize the partition created on your SSD/HDD and click “Next.”
4. After that, you must read the prompts and click “Finish.”
5. Now, return to the main interface, and click “Apply” to complete the pending operation.
6. After that, your OS can be migrated successfully to your new hard drive. After that, you can change your boot drive to boot from it.

Method 2 of how to change boot drive

Clean install Windows

There are multiple ways to install Windows cleanly, such as using USB, Windows Media Creation Tool, or even CD. Here, we will talk about how you can complete this task with the help of the Windows Media Creation Tool.

1. First, you need to download Windows Media Creation Tool on your computer.
2. After that, Run and Select the option “Create installation media.”
3. Next, click on “Next.”
4. Then, you need to select “USB flash drive.” Now, you should click on the “Next” option and follow the instructions to create a bootable USB drive for installation.
5. Next, you should change the sequence of BIOS to make the system boot from the USB.
6. Lastly, you must select to install Windows on your new hard drive and follow the prompts to set those crucial parameters.
7. After completing this process, you have to replace your new hard drive with the old one and then change the boot drive from UEFI/BIOS.

Therefore, these are some easy methods through which you can perform the task of how to change boot drive without any difficulty. Here, you have learned how to change boot drive on Windows 10 and 11. So, you should not hesitate and follow these steps of how to change boot drive carefully whenever you feel the need to change your boot drive and work with ease.

Do you need any technical guidance regarding your hard drive? More specifically, do you need guidance on installing your hard drive? We are here to help you with our detailed guide content on How To Install A Hard Drive: An Easy Walk Through!