[SOLVED] Need help swapping drive letters around after cloning

[Balthor]

After a bit of trouble, I've managed to clone my old HDD onto a new one and get Windows to run off of it. And as far as I know, that should've turned the new drive into the C: drive, but it didn't. It's still "D:", even though it's (according to the computer) being used to boot and run Windows.
Changing it directly through the disk & partition manager isn't allowed (the C: drive cannot be changed), so I'm at a bit of a loss.

 

[rgd1101]

see if it boot when you unplug the hdd.

 

[Balthor]

see if it boot when you unplug the hdd.

Hmm.
It does, but it's not working well at all. I'm assuming that it did turn my new HDD into the C: drive, but it's still trying to pull stuff from the locations of the D: drive, which is no longer there. So it won't even let me access the basic explorer.exe functionalities past a stripped down, backgroundless version of my desktop.
I had tested booting it up without the old drive before, but silly old me didn't go past the log-in screen because I assumed if it had gotten that far, everything was working fine.
I'm going to try and change the active partition back to the old C: drive and see if things work with that setting after I disable it. It should turn the new drive into the C: drive and not be confused, but regardless of if that works or not, I worry that it will get confused again once I plug the old HDD back in. I want to be able to use the old one, ideally, as it's a good bit of extra space that I can use.
More advice would be appreciated, I'll add another post after I do the switcheroo I just described.

 

[rgd1101]

doesn't sound like you clone the drive. what did you do exactly ?

 

[Balthor]

doesn't sound like you clone the drive. what did you do exactly ?

I used the Western Digital "edition" of Acronis to clone it. It should be all dandy, but I'm having an issue which is sort of making it difficult to check, and ties in with my main problem.
Turns out that removing the old HDD doesn't actually make the new drive the C: drive. It's sort of... confused with itself about if it is or isn't the D: drive? I've never really experienced this before.
It boots up to a blank light-blue background, and once I start up explorer. exe it has the same issues as before. But I've looked more thoroughly this time, using a different program's "Open file" menu to explore the system, and it seems like the drive is still "D:" but all windows functions that look for data in the D: drive don't find it. I found the drive format & partition tool (mmc.exe in the System32 folder) and made a shortcut to it in the desktop: editing the drive letter in the target field and the other field to C: would pop up a message saying it was invalid, which means that the HDD is almost certainly not being turned into the C: drive and remains D:. But the default addresses that point to the D: drive still don't work, even though I've navigated to the folder myself and witnessed that yes, the files are there!
It feels as if the drive had been "hardwired" to be D: and nothing else, possibly when cloning it? This is all pretty weird.

 

[rgd1101]

upload a screenshot of disk management to imgur.com and post the link here

 

[Balthor]

https://imgur.com/a/yBz1PdY

View: https://imgur.com/a/yBz1PdY

My OS is in spanish, so let me know if you need anything translated.

 

[rgd1101]

ok. now unplug the the old hdd. and do the same screenshot

 

[SkyNetRising]

My OS is in spanish, so let me know if you need anything translated.

So 500GB Disk 1 - is the old disk and 2TB Disk 2 is the new one. Right?
It is currently booting from bootloader on 2TB disk, but windows is loading from 500GB disk.

The problem is - after cloning fist boot from cloned drive has to be done with old drive disconnected. This is essential.

Redo cloning and disconnect old HDD for first boot from new drive.

 

[Balthor]

ok. now unplug the the old hdd. and do the same screenshot

I can't, as I said. Disk manager won't run because it thinks its executable isn't there. Though I'll try to run it directly through the task manager tomorrow, like I did with explorer, maybe that'll work.

 

[Balthor]

So 500GB Disk 1 - is the old disk and 2TB Disk 2 is the new one. Right?
It is currently booting from bootloader on 2TB disk, but windows is loading from 500GB disk.

The problem is - after cloning fist boot from cloned drive has to be done with old drive disconnected. This is essential.

Redo cloning and disconnect old HDD for first boot from new drive.

Yes, you guessed correctly.
I had no idea that I needed to disconnect it before running it for the first time with the new HDD. That really sucks, and none of the guides, programs or anything mentioned it. I'll try and redo the clone tomorrow then, and see if the procedure works.
Thanks for the info.

 

[Balthor]

Well, I'm having to send for a replacement for the drive, it started making an awful noise whenever the computer even started running. I'll do things as SkyNetRising suggested and report back, hopefully there won't be any more issues and the thread can be closed.

 

[Balthor]

Alright, the new drive arrived, and following SkyNetRising's instructions of disconnecting my old HDD before the first boot solved my issue. The drive still has an odd sound when shutting down, but from what I've been reading online, it seems to be "normal" for the WD Black drives of its size, some people say it's the safety mechanism it has locking up when the drive's no longer in use. In any case, everything else seems to work fine, SMART tests are saying everything's nominal, and my old drive is now successfully assigned to the letter D:. Thanks to everyone who lent a hand!