[SOLVED] Clone (move from smaller to larger HDD size) second hard drive in W10 and still be able to use installed applications?

[claustrophobist]

Hi there,

I have a system which has a second hard drive with installed applications, games (including Microsoft XBOX game pass games which create their odd logical partitions as security). I want to move from one drive to a larger one, without having to re-install all software on it. I believe it might be as easy as cloning the drive to the new one, and after installing it in the place of the previous, ensure that the drive letter is the same in Windows. Is my thinking right, or will I run into problems?

For clarity, the previous drive is a 256GB SSD, while the new one is a 512GB NVME M.2 (my motherboard has two slots, one is already filled with a NVME specifically for the OS).

 

[lvt]

You can use software like Macrium Reflect Free for this task.

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

I've used in for years without problem.

A boot drive will automatically have the letter C on a Windows system, you don't need to worry about it.

 

[claustrophobist]

Thanks for this - it is not a boot drive, just an applications drive. So I can just clone and ensure the drive has the original drive letter and should be good to go, right?

 

[lvt]

Thanks for this - it is not a boot drive, just an applications drive. So I can just clone and ensure the drive has the original drive letter and should be good to go, right?

You can reassign a drive's letter using this :

MiniTool Partition Wizard | Best partition magic alternative for Windows PC and Server

As a partition magic alternative, MiniTool Partition Wizard is the latest partition manager software that can be used to manage partitions on Windows 11/10/8/7 and Server 2003/2008/2012/2016/2019.

www.partitionwizard.com