Windows 10: Clone D drive with Users to new SSD

I am replacing a 240 MB Crucial M500 SSD that has the User folders, installed using sysprep, with an new MX500 1TB SSD. Acronis was used to clone the old SSD to the new one.
The Win10 OS is installed on a 256 MB M.2 NVMe Samsung 950 Pro drive. The motherboard is Asus-Z170 Deluxe.
Even if all peripheral drives are disconnected so that only the M.2 boot drive and cloned disk with the user folders are present, the system has a tendency to not assign the M.2 drive as the C drive.
How can I make sure the drive letter assignments are correct when booting for the first time?

:)

 

Swapping drive letters, including boot volume

I have a new computer. I want to clone the system to a new SSD. Can I change the drive letter of the SSD to C: after cloning?

I have a new ASUS M52BC with:

• 1 TB hard drive with a Windows (C and empty data (D partition
• Windows 8.1 (I will upgrade to Windows 10 very soon) on the hard drive
• Samsung SSD 850 EVO (physically installed but nothing more done to it)

What I want to get to is:

• 1 TB hard drive with the data (D partition and (for the old Windows partition) the drive letter of the C: changed to something else
• Windows 10 on the SSD as the C:

I don't intend to boot to Windows on the hard drive after I get Windows working on the SSD unless I need to remove the SSD for return to ASUS for repair. (My new computer had a bad motherboard when I received it but I hope I do not need to return it again.)

I want to clone Windows to the SSD using the Samsung Data Migration tool. During the clone, the SSD will of course not have the drive letter "C". To boot from and use the SSD after the cloning, it must have the drive letter "C", correct? I assume the Data
Migration tool cannot change the drive letter used by the software it clones.

After the clone, how do I swap the drive letters? I assume I cannot change the drive letter of the hard drive Windows partition when it was used to boot from because it would be the boot drive, correct?

I know that some people will suggest that I do a fresh install. I want to avoid doing that if possible.

I see
Migrate system partition to a new disk. I think that describes doing what I am trying to do, but unfortunately he does not know how he did it.

 

installing a ssd drive

1. Clone hard drive to new SSD.

2. When finished with cloning shut down computer.

3. Take out old hard drive and install SSD.

4. Boot computer.

 

If its booting from a drive with the system files on it then that will be drive c if its assigning c to another drive there must be boot files on it

 

Presently, the M.2 boot drive is assigned C. The User folders have to be on the D drive or the system will not boot.
How do I make sure both drive letters are not reassigned? Or if they are, how to assign them correctly.

The assign command for DISKPART help files indicate "You cannot assign drive letters to system volumes, boot volumes, or volumes that contain the paging file. You cannot assign a drive letter to an OEM partition or any GPT partition other than a basic data partition."

The D volume has a small 4 GB paging file. I am assuming that the disk containing the Users folders is a system volume.

 

The Asus motherboard UEFI has a boot manager, so it was easy to select the correct drive.
New SSD in place!