Set up a custom installation with Windows 10/Server on one drive and the operating system on another.
Set up a custom installation with Windows 10/Server on one drive and the operating system on another.
There are methods to detach the operating system from a separate storage device, but my goal is to isolate the EFI from the OS. Here’s what you need to know. Using Intel Mobile Board V2.0 from the Compute Project. It supports dual E5 2600 Xeons and plenty of RAM. This board is manufactured by Quanta, yet its specifications match those of other OCP boards from the same era. Everything functions well, except it can’t boot from PCIe drives or M.2 cards—so I can’t install Windows even though the installer shows it’s possible. My aim is to replace the current OS with a 16GB SATA SSD as the boot medium and run the OS inside the M.2 slot on the adapter. It works fine with Linux, but finding a way to set up Windows this way is tricky, and the hardware feels sluggish. I’m not very familiar with changing installation processes because they’ve been simplified, but I still value being able to manage the setup directly.
Set up an EFI partition on the older SATA SSD first. Then install Windows as you would with the M.2 drive. The system will recognize the EFI partition and save the necessary files there automatically. This approach ensures a smooth multi-boot setup—remember, if the SSD fails, you won’t be able to access the M.2 installation.
Thanks for the clarification. It seems restoring the EFI would be straightforward if needed.
It functions well yet remains turned off. The impact would be notable. It also appears to enable hot swapping via PCIe, which is something I haven't encountered before. This aligns with expectations because these components are meant to connect through PCIe and should support swapping compute modules.