Windows 10: How would I delete the OS from old cloned HDD?

Hello I recently upgraded my Dell inspiron 3650 to an SSD leaving me a 1TB drive to use as storage, which I did and it worked great for about 2 weeks and then i started to notice small glitches in my system until finally my Bluetooth just quit working all together. So after 4 hrs chatting with Dell support and resetting my PC and losing everything we finally figured out that it was the OS still on my old drive that was still trying to run so I opened my tower and unplugged the original 1TB and left only the SSD and now all is fine except I have 1TB of storage that I dont know how to clean so that I can use it. I am not worried about losing all data on the drive so hopefully that will make things easier. If anyone has any ideas all advice will be apreciated. Thanks in advance.

:)

 

Windows 10 Installed on Wrong Drive

It would be expected to boot from the old hard drive until you unplug the source hard drive, as you've done nothing to tell it to do otherwise.

Often after cloning or reimaging it requires unplugging the source drive to run Startup Repair from the booted Windows media or
Recovery drive

until it starts.

But if you're afraid to unplug the source drive. you can install
EasyBCD (click Download - no Name or Email required) to the source drive to Add the new install on the Add New Entry tab by Type, Name (your choice) and drive letter as seen from the old OS. Once you Add Entry reboot and choose the new OS from a Windows
Boot menu.

Then once the new OS is booted you can type msconfig in Start Search, open System Config, on Boot tab delete the old OS to removed it from the Boot Menu. You can also install EasyBCD to it to delete the old OS on the Edit Boot Menu tab, or hide it by choosing
Skip the Boot Menu. Once removed from Boot Menu, restart to test the Clone will boot, move the data off the old drive to delete all partitions in Disk Mgmt, or to get it cleaner wipe it with

Diskpart Clean Command. Then repartition in Disk Mgmt as desired for storage, etc. It is always best to delete all old OS partitions to avoid multiple problems.

 

Replacing an existing Hard Disk by cloning

Go back to the previous operating system? That's going to be tough because I deleted all my Win7 files and backup folder after using Win10 for 2 months.

The suggestions in the link provided don't really help me much, either. I have gone online to look for a solution and almost everyone seems to have cloned their hard disk and 'swapped' the old HD with the cloned HD and moved on with their life as if it's
not such a big deal.

I checked several cloning software and decided to go with EaseUS because

1. it was free and

2. it claimed I could just clone and have my system up and running without the need to install everything again.

After deleting unnecessary files and uninstalling older programmes, I got my Used Space down to 215Gb from 410Gb and cloned the drive, using EaseUS, which took about two hours. However, after switching the old HD with the new one, when I booted up, I got
the same message my friend got: Boot image not found. Insert boot disk.

I don't think it can be as complicated as I think. I just want to copy everything from my old hard disk to the new one, remove the old disk and put in the new one and continue using my laptop without having to install the OS, MSOffice and other software
all over again.

If someone can tell me how to do that, without saying fancy stuff like "create a boot disk, change boot sequence at startup, update BIOS, etc" I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

 

It's simple enough delete all partitions create new ones format job done. If you have problems in Windows lots of free partitions software that boots from CD to do it

 

The best tool you could have *Smile

Bootable Partition Manager| MiniTool Partition Wizard Bootable Edition

 

+1 for MiniTool Partition Wizard (MPW). I suspect the active partitions belonging to the old OS on your old HDD are causing problems. Use MPW to delete all partitions on the old drive, then create a new (or several new partitions) and format them. Ensure no partitions are active. Ensure you have backed up any data you want to keep from the old HDD before you wipe it!

 

@artislee
Since you don't care about the data on this disk. You don't need any third party software to accomplish this task.

• Reconnect your 1TB HD, make sure that the SSD is set to first boot order in BIOS then boot up Windows.
• To delete all partitions from the disk. Open Admin command (Win+X->Command Prompt (Admin)) and type:
  diskpart
  list disk ====> Take a note of disk # associated with the 1TB HDD
  select disk # ====> replace # with disk # noted from above
  clean
  exit
• Open disk management (Win+X->Disk Management), initialize it then format to be used as data disk.