Dual boot existing Windows 10 with new Windows 10 on new drive

Question

I couldn't find a resource about two Windows 10 installs on different drives dual booting.

I'll be building a more powerful PC soon but I have an existing Windows 10 drive with a lot of stuff installed that I want to keep making use of in the new machine. Just to be awkward though, I would like a new SSD, install Windows 10 Pro cleanly onto it and then dual boot the two Windows 10 installations. Basically I want to keep my existing work/music environments separate from the fun stuff.

The new Windows 10 install will be a new Pro license (the existing one is an upgraded Win7 Home license).

So the question is can it be done and how? I've seen a lot of talk about dual booting major OS versions but nothing about the same OS version (apart from the Home/Pro thing). Will the boot screen be able to clearly show me which drive is which if they are both Win10? Are there any quirks/bugs with how Windows will operate in such a scenario?

Answer 1

Any information about dual-booting Windows Vista and newer Windows OSes still apply for Windows 10. Of course you can use multiple Windows 10s, 8s or 7s in the same boot store.

The name entries in the boot are generated during Windows setup, I always rename mine after setup, but I'm sure the Windows setup program is smart enough to not use two entries with the same name. You can always change it later.

If you install a fresh Windows 10 first and already have an existing Windows 10 disk for dual boot, just add an entry to the boot store.