How to change current C:/ drive assignment when adding new hard drive

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k@rt

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Hi. I have a PC that currently has one partitioned 500GB HDD with a C:/ drive for windows (150Gb) and a D:/ drive for data. What I want to do is add a second 128Gb SDD to the PC, install a more recent version of windows on that and then change the current C:/ to be the F:/ drive.

For now I would like to preserve the current windows installation on the partitioned HDD as the F:/ drive, if I have any problems with the new setup I can simply remove the SSD and reboot the old installation.

I have never done this before so am unsure what is the best method. Can I reassign the drive letter assignment during the windows install process? Or should I just removed the current HDD entirely, install on the SSD, and then add the other drive back in? I am not sure how letters are assigned and whether the HDD would get new letter assignment when I put it back or whether it would adopt it's old assignment.

I don't want to change any of the data that is currently on the HDD, only change the C:/ to F:/ to allow the SSD to be the new C:/ drive, I had the feeling that during the windows install it would reformat the drives if I changed the letters, is that the case? I think there is software within windows to edit drive partitions, however if I try to change the windows C:/ drive to F:/ within windows whilst it is running, won't that cause problems? Can this even be done from within the bios itself?

If someone could outline the best/easiest/most reliable way to do this I would be most grateful. The PC is quite old now and running vista but is more or less stable, I am simply not sure how well it will run windows 10, and would rather be able to resort to the current working version if anything proves problematic.

Thanks!!
 
Solution
USAFRet
If you install Windows on the new 128GB SSD, that will become the C drive.
You can then give the original 150GB partition whatever drive letter you want.

You can't change that from C to F while that OS is running.

To do this:
Have only the new SSD connected.
Install the OS
Install drivers, and let it do all the current updates.

This does require that you reinstall all your applications. The new OS on the new SSD knows nothing about them.

I must say, though...a 128GB SSD is at the wrong end of the price vs size chart. With todays prices, a 250GB or larger is a much better buy.


What are the specs on this PC?
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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If you install Windows on the new 128GB SSD, that will become the C drive.
You can then give the original 150GB partition whatever drive letter you want.

You can't change that from C to F while that OS is running.

To do this:
Have only the new SSD connected.
Install the OS
Install drivers, and let it do all the current updates.

This does require that you reinstall all your applications. The new OS on the new SSD knows nothing about them.

I must say, though...a 128GB SSD is at the wrong end of the price vs size chart. With todays prices, a 250GB or larger is a much better buy.


What are the specs on this PC?
 
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Solution
herrwizo

herrwizo

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Steps are as follows:

1) Install SSD and boot to Windows by using HDD
2) Install some free disk cloning utility such as EaseUS Todo Backup (there are many others as well). Use it to clone your current C drive to your new SSD. Absolutely make sure that you also clone "hidden" (system) partitions, else the drive won't boot. Of course, you don't have to clone data partition from current HDD.
3) Unplug your HDD (physically) and boot by only using SSD. Make sure it can boot and that stuff works.
3) Plug your HDD back in. Go to BIOS and set your SSD as default boot drive.
4) Windows should boot, and your SSD should automatically have C letter assigned.
5) Go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Disk manager and assign whatever letter you wish to your old Windows partition.
 
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faalin

faalin

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Turn off your computer and unplug the HDD that is in there now. Plug the SSD in and install windows to it. Once you have windows up and running on the new SSD plug the old HDD in and it will re map your letters for you. Most likely changing C->D and D->F The SSD will now be your C drive. There is no way to change your C: letter inside of windows, the booted OS always wants to be on the C: drive.

Now with a fresh install any and all of your programs and games will have to be reinstall. When they get installed it put little bits of information inside the windows system folder. When you move to the new OS those programs wont load since those little bits aren't in the new windows system folder.
 
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faalin

faalin

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This only works if the SSD has enough room on it. Since hes moving a 500Gb partition to a 128GB SSD I don't think this will work.
 
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herrwizo

herrwizo

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He does not need to move entire drive, only the system partition + hidden ones. It depends how big his system partition is. And you are right, 120GB is generally too low in capacity to be considered anyway.

There is also another approach - instead of disk cloning, install new Windows from scratch on new SSD with HDD unplugged. Then later plug the HDD back in. If the old Windows partition bug you, you can even assign it to have no latter at all, which will make it invisible in explorer ;) But all data intact, of course.
 
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helpstar

helpstar

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Just a little recommendation, get at least a 240GB SSD.

Windows Vista is on the old HDD and he wants to try windows 10 on the new SSD.

Just do as stated before: unplug hdd, plug in ssd, boot windows installation from a installation media, after windows is set right, power down, plug in hdd. Eventually you will have to set the bios priority in BIOS to the SSD or the hdd will boot.

 
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K

k@rt

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Thank you very much everyone for your replies. USAFRet and faalin confirmed what I suspected was probably the easiest method, however as I am not 100% sure how drive letter are assigned I thought there was a slight risk that when I added the old HDD back in it may get confused as it would still have a valid boot partition on it. It is an old Q6600 PC that I had been keeping working more or less with blue tak and spit (not literally) so I am going with Windows 7 for now as I think it will be more stable and reliable that Windows 10.

You are of course completely correct helpstar, 120Gb SSDs are far from the best value option nowadays... it just happened that I had one which was available. However the bios I am running is pretty old, will it differentiate between SSD and HDD as different boot devices? r.e. what you mentioned about the boot order. In my other PC I have 2 SSDs and 1 HDD with windows on the SSD, but in the boot order it just points to DVD, Hard drive, USB... there is no way to specify between the HDD and SSD taht I have ever noticed.

Thanks again everybody!! Greatly appreciated your time and answers.

BTW... with SSD I assume I just do a quick NTFS format during the installing of windows?
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Drive letters:
Generally, the drive you are booting from is the C. Unless you force it to be something else. Don't do that.

Where it gets confusing is if you have 2 drives and 2 individual OS's.
For instance - 1 x SSD (Win 10) and 1 x HDD (Win 7).

Power on, select the SSD as the one to boot from. It sees itself as the C, and the other drive, the HDD, as a D.
Power off, power up again, but this time select the HDD to boot from.
It sees itself as the C drive, and the SSD becomes the D.

This gets a lot of people all wrapped around the axle, wondering what happened.

It gets even worse if you have 2 drives, each with a copy of the same OS.
Recently, we had a guy here. Wondering how his wife's PC (Win 10) automagically reverted back to as it was 6 months ago.
Restore Points, virus, etc, etc.

Nope...it was a bad SATA cable.
He had the normal OS on the SSD. And an original copy of the OS still on the HDD.
SSD was first in the boot order, as it should be.
The bad data cable prevented it booting from the SSD. So it went to the next option in the boot order, the HDD. Which had not been touched or updated in the 6 months since the cloning operation.
Looked not much different. Same OS and all. But without everything that had happened in the last few months.

Poor guy was panicking thinking he had lost 6 months of family pics, applications, etc.
 
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k@rt

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Interesting, thanks for explaining... does that mean that the drive letter is assigned by Mobo bios and the determination as to which drive is which is made as part of the boot process? And can that process determine which partitions are boot partitions without being expressly told? If I put a new drive into my PC with a version of windows pre-installed and correctly configured for my system, would it be instantly recognized as a possible boot drive, or would you have to tell it?
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Drive letters are assigned by the OS itself.
Which drive to boot from? That comes from the boot list in the BIOS, and what is on each drive.
For instance, a boot oder of:
DVD
USB
HDD
SSD

It will go through each device in turn, looking for something to boot from.

Putting another drive in?
That depends. It would have to be a choice in the above list. If "HDD" were not in there, and you dropped an HDD in...the BIOS would just ignore it and boot from something else.
 
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USAFRet

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It will only do it for drives that the BIOS sees as connected.
If you don't have a DVD drive, it will not present that as an option to boot from.
 
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k@rt

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Nevermind that wasn't really what I meant... my current main PC has both SSDs and HDDs connected but I am sure either just lists Hard Drive/HDD for the boot order... I am pretty sure I have never seen SSD in the list, and my windows is on the SSD. I thought BIOS just identified hard drives regardless of whether they are HDD or SSD and didn't list them as two separate boot devices.
 
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k@rt

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Its a very old PC we are talking about here, running on a Core2 Q6600, long before the age of SSDs and the bios is equally old... but even on my PC which is more recent (2012) I don't ever remember seeing an SSD specific setting anywhere.

Is it better I format the SSD (it's a new disk) in my main PC before putting it into the other and installing the OS? Or does it not make any difference if I format for the first time during the installation of windows 7?
 
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