Windows 10: Cloning a hard drive and replacing it: how to keep the same drive Letter (D:)upon reboot?

Discus and support Cloning a hard drive and replacing it: how to keep the same drive Letter (D:)upon reboot? in Windows 10 Ask Insider to solve the problem; Hi all, I have replaced my 1tb HDD by a 2tb SDD on my laptop. So far so good, I used a USB 3 to SATA cable, cloned the secondary drive and replaced... Discussion in 'Windows 10 Ask Insider' started by /u/Gromchy, Dec 2, 2020.

  1. Cloning a hard drive and replacing it: how to keep the same drive Letter (D:)upon reboot?


    Hi all,

    I have replaced my 1tb HDD by a 2tb SDD on my laptop. So far so good, I used a USB 3 to SATA cable, cloned the secondary drive and replaced it.

    But here is the problem: upon rebooting, the secondary drive name becomes E: instead of D:, which messes up all my programs associations (about half of them are installed in the secondary drive).

    I was able to fix it afterwards by using a tool to rename it, then reboot. But a lot of programs got messed up and I had a reinstall them. No data lost as it's a clone, but still...

    In the future, how can I make sure to rename the drive to D: before replacing my drive which is already named D: ? Obviously I can't name both the same name D...

    submitted by /u/Gromchy
    [link] [comments]

    :)
     
    /u/Gromchy, Dec 2, 2020
    #1

  2. 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 (CCloning a hard drive and replacing it: how to keep the same drive Letter (D:)upon reboot? :) and empty data (DCloning a hard drive and replacing it: how to keep the same drive Letter (D:)upon reboot? :) 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 (DCloning a hard drive and replacing it: how to keep the same drive Letter (D:)upon reboot? :) 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.
     
    Simple Samples, Dec 2, 2020
    #2
  3. Sanhime Win User
    Cloning from 1TB to 2TB hard drive

    Whats a good free imaging/cloning program? I have a 1TB hard drive with Win7 and I want to seamlessly migrate my stuff to a 2TB hard drive. Any suggestions?
     
    Sanhime, Dec 2, 2020
    #3
  4. Cloning a hard drive and replacing it: how to keep the same drive Letter (D:)upon reboot?

    Cloning from 1TB to 2TB hard drive

    Hello, Migrating a 1TB Hard Drive to a 2TB HDD is very possible.

    My Rig started out on just 160GB, when I upgraded HDDs, I cloned my 160 GB into a newly bought 500GB HDD. (it was an OS HDD)

    Then on the next HDD upgrade(I bought a 1 TB) I cloned that 500GB to a 1 TB HDD.

    No problems at all.

    From what I can remember the program I used was Acronis?? I forgot. But it ran the cloning process outside of windows. the cloning took like 30 to 1 hr. then I switched drive letters and the newly bought HDD is now my boot device.
     
    lyndonguitar, Dec 2, 2020
    #4
Thema:

Cloning a hard drive and replacing it: how to keep the same drive Letter (D:)upon reboot?

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