I currently have Windows 11 on the NVME drive. I removed that drive and tried to install another instance of Windows on my external 1tb drive, however, The bios isn’t seeing any of the USB drives that I am using as being bootable. I know this worked before because I used those methods to get the current Win 11 OS up and running.
Is this a problem with Windows or is there something that I’m missing?
Not sure how you tried to install so maybe it isn’t bootable.
You also say
So how many drives have you made into bootable OSs?
if you do have a bootable drive have you accessed the BIOS to ensure it picks it up?
Yes actually. I removed the NVMe from the laptop and placed it into an external USB enclosure. I then tried to boot from that, but the bios didn’t see the drive in that case either!
Ok but did you ‘tell’ the bios to use only the USB or is it looking for the internal boot?
I’ll switch off and enter the BIOS to get some detail. Back in a bit 
Yes BIOS > BOOT
Two main sections
Boot order and
Recognised devices
So you will have to ensure the device is recognised and then get it in order, auto doesn’t necessarily do what you would hope.
When I dual booted with Ubuntu I had to go throught setting the BOOT opions twice as the first time it didn’t work/
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You may have to set the boot order to “first” or “last”, not “auto”.
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Alternatively, manually booting with F12 usually works for any plugged in device as long as you haven’t explicitly disabled the boot entry.
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Hum… I set it to last then to first with no luck. Also, when pressing F12 my machine freezes with the led flashing orange in 1 second intervals. Time to update bios I suppose.
EDIT: and when I say freezes, I mean it requires a hard power off. CTRL + ALT + Delete does not work.
Edit #2: Sigh that was the charging indicator. (idiot)
Yeah, it’s normal for it to take a bit to enumerate when you have a USB device
I flashed my bios with the same version and now my F12 boot manager works. Curious.
Alright, I can see the drives in the bios but not in the boot manager. Is there a special way to format an installer or something? Does it have to be NTFS or… is framework special in some other way?
I rebuilt the installation media with the media creation tool. Now the sd card shows up in the bios as an EFI. Trying to install it again.
Have you looked into using Ventoy?
I have to deal with a lot of ISOs for work and started using Ventoy a couple of months ago and it is great!
I use it to hold different versions of Linux, Windows, and other utilities like Memtest86.
It works with every computer I’ve used.
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It boots! Ahhhhh.
Thanks, everyone. More knowledge is always better.
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No I haven’t. I’ll check it out.
Windows won’t let you install into external storage devices easily.
Here is a thread on how to do it manually:
Guide: How to install Windows 10 onto storage expansion card - Framework Laptop - Framework Community
In the above part of the guide, make sure you do a smaller size than 949044 since your drive is not a 1TB expansion card
For your drive I would just do size=900000 just in case
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I used 250Gb since I want to image this install for potential future use.
I’m using windows 11 so I followed this guys tutorial
It was simpler and whatnot as well. Only real diff is that I labelled my windows partition W since C was taken (for some reason)
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@Shawn_Lewis This looks really useful, thanks. Can I confirm a couple of questions with you:
- Did you install Win11 successfully onto an expansion card, while running another OS from the main NVME drive?
- Do the two OSs boot nicely together?
All the advice I’ve found on dual boots recommends installing Windows first. I wasn’t planning to use Windows at all on my Framework, but I’ve changed jobs and they’re not very Ubuntu friendly, so I’m going to need some kind of Windows setup. However, I really really really (really) don’t want to have to go through the process of wiping my NVME, then installing Windows, then installing Ubuntu again, so putting it on the expansion card seemed the best choice.
I’ll make a clone of the NVME for backup before I mess around with anything, but if you or anything else can offer any ressurance about getting Win11 going on the expansion card (where it will very definitely be my secondary choice) that would be welcome. Thanks!