Issues with HDD to SDD upgrade

[KevinJWeeks]

I recently added a Samsung 850 EVO to my pc, was using a wd velociraptor. I used the migration software to clone the hdd to the new sdd.

It all works, pc boots just fine, but now it only shows one drive in my computer. properties of that drive shows both drives. I can physically remove either drive and it boots fine.

Boot priority is set to the ssd.
Windows 10 OS

What I am trying to do is wipe the HDD and set it up as just a data drive. I am unable to format the hdd and give it a new designation.

please help, I'm going bonkers trying everything I can think of.

thanks in advance

 

[glamdringfh]

Does the old HDD you're trying to format show up at all in Disk Management?

It sounds like you might need to re-assign a new boot drive letter to the older HDD, or you might also have a Disk Signature Collision.

-Open up Disk Management by right clicking the start button and selecting 'Disk Management'
-If the drive shows up, right click the drive and choose either 'online' if the disk is offline, or 'Change Drive Letter and Paths' if the drive has the same letter as your new SSD.

 

[KevinJWeeks]

Does the old HDD you're trying to format show up at all in Disk Management?

It sounds like you might need to re-assign a new boot drive letter to the older HDD, or you might also have a Disk Signature Collision.

-Open up Disk Management by right clicking the start button and selecting 'Disk Management'
-If the drive shows up, right click the drive and choose either 'online' if the disk is offline, or 'Change Drive Letter and Paths' if the drive has the same letter as your new SSD.

The original Drive still has the drive letter C: and the Samsung was offline. when I changed it to online it was automatically given the letter H:

the HD says: Boot, Primary partition, page file, crash dump
SSD says: primary partition

when I try to change the letter for the hd it says that I am not allowed to do so.

there is also dup recover partitions and efi partitions listed for each drive.

Edit: I went into the bios and forced it to boot with the ssd and now the drive letters are reversed. I am able to format the hhd. I'm hopping by deleting the os and everything off the hhd it will stop giving the drive the letter c. it seamed like it was set up as a dual boot... but with the same os on each boot option. when it is done formatting I will try to remove the recovery and efi partitions from it. not sure how to do that yet.

 

[glamdringfh]

Are you sure you've booted into your SSD drive? Is it set first in your BIOS boot order?

If there was a disk signature collision and you were booted into the SSD, the PC should have recognized the HDD as offline and given THAT drive a different path, not the SSD.

What I would do now is physically unplug the HDD. Just boot into the SSD and re-assign the drive letter to C:

After that plug the HDD back in and see if it is recognized as offline. Hopefully you will now be able to assign it a different drive path and then format it normally.

 

[KevinJWeeks]

Are you sure you've booted into your SSD drive? Is it set first in your BIOS boot order?

If there was a disk signature collision and you were booted into the SSD, the PC should have recognized the HDD as offline and given THAT drive a different path, not the SSD.

What I would do now is physically unplug the HDD. Just boot into the SSD and re-assign the drive letter to C:

After that plug the HDD back in and see if it is recognized as offline. Hopefully you will now be able to assign it a different drive path and then format it normally.

Thank you for the answers so far

the ssd has the letter c now and I am almost halfway through formatting the hd. when it is done I am going to reset the bios to try to remove the hdd and the windows boot manager tied to the hd from the boot options if it doesn't do it automatically.
right now the boot menu shows the ssd, the hdd and windows boot manager tied to each. 5 things are shown there, along with the optical drive.

also, will formatting it remove the recovery and efi partitions? if not how do I do that?

 

[glamdringfh]

Glad to hear you're able to start formatting the HDD!

1) No need to try and remove the HDD from the BIOS, as long as you format it everything will be fine. Just make sure the SSD stays at the top of the Drive Boot Order.

2) A full format will erase all previous partitions, so you shouldn't see the recovery and efi partitions after the format.

 

[KevinJWeeks]

Glad to hear you're able to start formatting the HDD!

1) No need to try and remove the HDD from the BIOS, as long as you format it everything will be fine. Just make sure the SSD stays at the top of the Drive Boot Order.

2) A full format will erase all previous partitions, so you shouldn't see the recovery and efi partitions after the format.

Everything is good so far but the partitions will not go away.. boots up pretty fast. post is taking 8 seconds or so.. ill figure out what I need to disable to speed that up later.

thank you for the help

 

[glamdringfh]

You're most welcome.

Since you're running Windows 10 on an SSD I also recommend taking a look at this guide, it will help you optimize your Windows settings for use with a SSD:

http://www.back2gaming.com/focus-story/ssd-optimization-for-windows-8-and-8-1/