Attaching the SATA disk does not get an automatic entry in AN Launcher or either Windows Boot Managers.
AN Launcher is very low-function - by design - so there was never the slightest possibility that it would add an entry on its own. I had hoped for more from Win's Boot Manager but no such luck - it's far worse. You''ll have to used 'bcdedit' when booted to a Windows command line to add an entry.
I guess I need to ask AN how to get the SATA Windows installation to boot from AN Launcher if I decide to use the SATA disk.
Good luck on that... In my earlier posting I left out all the ugly details in an attempt to keep it simple. Since that didn't work out, here's an introduction to harsh reality:
AN Launcher is incapable of running an .EFI file located on another disk because it doesn't know how to parse a UEFI disk identifier. If you look at 'launcher.cfg', you'll see that all paths start at the root directory of the _current_ disk. For example:
Win11 = \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi
If you wanted it to reference another disk, it would have to look something like this:
Win11 = HD(2,GPT,9f11367c-448a-4272-92b8-af7e9c01973c,800,82000)\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi
Even if AN Launcher could parse this, you'd have a lot of fun trying to construct it.
In any case, industry-standard practice is to have only
one EFI System Partition (ESP) and to rely on each bootloader to know how to navigate multiple disks on its own terms - and all of them do. As such, there's no reason to have multiple bootloaders for a single OS. (FYI: while OS/2's boot manager and osloader are separate binaries, grub and WinBM act as both boot manager and osloader.)
Compunding the problem further: UEFI has a builtin boot manager (that's what you're looking at when you go into the firmware). If you believe the specs, you should be able to add entries that point at any disk, and the firmware should boot them in the specified order (i.e. if the first entry fails to boot, it moves on to the next one). Sadly, that isn't the way many manufacturers have implemented it. If you're booting from Disk 1, Lenovo, Dell, and others will try all of the entries that reference Disk 1 before they ever try Disk 2. Consequently, putting an entry for Disk 2 at the top of the list has no effect because the firmware will (likely) find something bootable on Disk 1. This is the underlying reason for that "industry-standard practice" of having a single ESP which is always on the first disk: to workaround non-compliant firmware.
If you decide you still want to use the SATA drive, I'd suggest you use Bing to search for "add OS to Windows Boot Manager" for instructions on how to use 'bcdedit.exe' (there are also some 3rd-party BCD editors available to ease the pain).
