Windows 10: Set windows to boot from a different drive (from a clone of Windows)

I have cloned my windows operating system from an SSD to the hard-drive on my laptop. I now want to boot my machine from this cloned version of windows on the hard-drive. In the 'old days' I have been battling with the BIOS settings and Windows Boot Manager - but can't work out how to complete this seemingly trivial task. Below is a screen shot showing the old Windows 10 OS on the C drive, and the clone on the F drive.

Back-story to this below if you are interested .. *Smile





Back story : I am very short of space on my SSD C drive (as can be seen from the image). I decided to upgrade to a high-performance 1TB SSD .. a Samsung 970 Evo. This is advertised as being very easy to use as Samsung provide a cloning utility to copy your current OS to the new SSD. However, THIS DOES NOT WORK ON LAPTOPS! :-( For Samsung's clone tool to work, it needs to be plugged into the mother-board on the computer. As most laptops like mine only have one SSD slot, the obvious choice is to use an SSD via a USB adaptor ... but Samsung's clone utility does not allow this. It will not recognise a Samsung drive on the end of a USB (even though the disk is perfectly well recognised by Windows *Mad). I can't just image the current SSD - because the Samsung Evo requires special drivers and will not boot if I just make a clone of the current OS *Mad*Mad So .. my plan is to clone my current Windows 10 to the D drive on the machine. Boot from that. Install the Samsung drivers onto that version of Windows 10 .. then finally, remove the old SSD, put in the new Evo then do the whole process backwards to get my operating system back onto the Samsung Evo.

By the way ... strong recommendation .. DO NOT BUY AN EVO SSD for a laptop with a single SSD slot. Samsung have clearly not worked out how to migrate your current operating system to the new drive. When I contacted their support they were completely disinterested and have me a "RTFM" response .. which they pointed out says "Can't be used via a USB". Thanks Samsung.

:)

 

Moving to SSD. Clone or not to clone?

Part of how I keep my SSD fast is to clone it to a platter drive, then clone back. You just want to make sure that you are only cloning teh used space, and not the empty space.


So, again, I isntall Windows to the ssd. Clone to platter drive, then clone back.

I am not sure why, but if I do not do the clone step, the drive's speed, and windows booting, decreases substantially within a week or so.

I am using a Corsair F60 SSD and a Western Digital 500AAKS as drives, and using the free version of Acronis that WD provides, if any of that matters. I am not sure, at this point.

 

How to clone a hard drive?

I'm a little confused about one thing with this guide.

If my existing HDD is unplugged, and the only thing plugged in is my new, blank, SSD...where is the system image being stored for Windows to restore from?

Edit: I missed the part where it says you'll need an extra HDD to do this, my bad. Do you know if an external HDD would work to store the system image on?

 

Windows 7 booting off wrong drive?!?!?

Please move if this is in the wrong place.

I have two hard drives, a 1.5TB drive, and a 160GB drive. Windows is installed on the 1.5TB drive, as are all my files and programs. The 160GB drive has a bunch of old files, and apparently the bootmgr and boot folder. Nothing else is on the 160GB drive, other than media files etc.

If I remove the 160GB drive from the machine, windows refuses to boot, plug it back in, it works fine. The setup with two hard drives I have now is temporary, as the 160GB drive will go into another machine.

My question is, can someone give me a step by step on how to make windows force to boot off the 1.5TB drive, ignoring the 160GB drive in the boot process completely?
I don't know how to do this in Windows 7, on XP I would just run the /fixmbr command and its related ones.

Any help would be appreciated.

Note: I would really really rather not have to wipe and reinstall, I know it can be done without one as I've had this issue with XP before.