Windows 10: Installing to a second Drive. D: or external (Non Boot up Drives)

so I have a gaming laptop as well as a desktop PC

My desktop PC uses a small boot up drive that is full or close to full since its probably 250g BUT I have a 4T Mybook Hard drive attached for saving games.

My laptop has a small boot up drive with a 2T SS Drive inside it for saving games as well.


My issue is titles from the Microsoft store or from game pass keep trying to save to my boot up drives making downloading games a pain and pretty much rendering my PC and Laptop useless if trying to use Microsoft services as a launcher. I Want to download the new Gears 5 Title bc its my favorite game franchise and yet my preferred method of gaming (PC) is rendered useless to this issue. IM afraid I may not even be able to play at launch and that will be extremely upsetting. IS THERE ANY WORKAROUNDS or way to force these games to work with my D: Drives. Ive looked it up on forums via Microsoft Q+A's and the setting changes do not work. the Microsoft store still refuses to acknowledge the D drive and insisting on installing to

:)

 

Can Windows be installed on drive D:

During setup you can select to install Windows on any detected drive or partition but it will still need the "C" drive to work. Multiboot environments allow Windows to be installed on secondary drives.

After self test the BIOS steps through the boot sequence looking for the device to boot from and passes control to the boot sector on the drive. So although Windows can be on the second drive the boot code has to be on 1st. It depends on why you want it
to load Windows on D:

 

External drive

Hi Richard,

There are several factors that can cause your external drive to not read DVDs even though the system is recognizing the device. This could be caused by a driver that needs to updated or corrupted files. For us to resolve your concern, kindly answer the questions
below:

• Just to confirm, the device that is not working properly is a external DVD optical drive?
• Were there any recent changes or updates installed on your computer?
• Have you tried to plug the external drive to a different port on your computer?

As a initial recommendation, we suggest that your run the built in troubleshooter in Windows 10. Kindly refer to the steps below:

• Type “Troubleshooting” in the Search bar and press Enter.
• Click on “View All” in the top left corner.
• This will display the list of troubleshooters which are built-in in the computer. You can click on
  Hardware and Devices from the list and you can run the troubleshooter.

This will check for common errors that affect hardware on your computer and attempts to correct them.

We look forward to your response after completing the steps.

 

trying to install 7 w/o optical drive or USB drive (do have an external hdd)

This method is going to be trial/error on my part but here's my stab at it:

Use the guide he linked. Substitute in step 4, DO NOT FORMAT. Pre-format the hard drive with another PC/current windows install in NTFS format, then create 2 partitions. 1 to install from and one to install to. So in step 4 I beleive all you would have to do is a "clean" "select partition XX" & "active" command.

In step 5, use virtual CD/DVD software.

EDIT:

The only problem I see with above is how are you going to install while booting? Meaning, for it to boot wouldn't you have to be external but yet must install to an internal drive?