Question Re formatting old drive after cloning

[JamesHell9698]

Hi all,

I just finished cloning an old failing Hard drive and its all gone fine. I would like to keep the old drive in if possible but im not sure what will happen if i delete everything off it right now as i think all my programmes are still loading off that and not the new drive, even after changing the old one to my H drive and the new one to E, as the old one was.

What do I do? If i clear the old drive now will all my programmes still work as normal from the new E drive?

Thanks!

 

[popatim]

Unplug the old drive and test please.
It should work as I have done this many times in the past without an issue but have yet to do it on win10

 

[JamesHell9698]

Unplug the old drive and test please.
It should work as I have done this many times in the past without an issue but have yet to do it on win10

Okay I'll do that, thank you! Ngl I have no idea why I didnt think of that myself haha.

 

[winston_white86]

Question on the reformatting of the harddrive i just cloned over to a new crucial 525gb M.2 but my windows is still showing as main on my old harddrive i tried to cleaning the harddrive but it wouldnt let me dele the whole thing i am booting off the m.2 and everything seems to be working fine but i want to free up the old hdd for storage if anyone can help me with a step by step for this i would be really thankful

 

[USAFRet]

Question on the reformatting of the harddrive i just cloned over to a new crucial 525gb M.2 but my windows is still showing as main on my old harddrive i tried to cleaning the harddrive but it wouldnt let me dele the whole thing i am booting off the m.2 and everything seems to be working fine but i want to free up the old hdd for storage if anyone can help me with a step by step for this i would be really thankful

You physically verify the system works from the new drive by itself.

Power OFF
Disconnect the old drive
Power up
Does it boot correctly?
Then, verify the boot order lists the m.2 drive as first in the selection.

Powering on after that should allow you to wipe that old drive.

Using the commandline diskpart function and the clean command is the easiest and best way to wipe it fully
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-and-format-storage-drive-using-diskpart-windows-10

Use diskpart to create, delete and modify disk partitions | TechTarget

Follow these step-by-step instructions to perform a successful diskpart delete partition operation among other disk-related jobs in Windows.

searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com

How to Diskpart Erase/Clean a Drive Through the Command Prompt | Seagate Deutschland

This article explains the Microsoft Diskpart Erase utility. The command that erases the drive during this process is "Clean". In this article "Clean" and erase are used interchangeably. Cleaning or erasing a storage device removes all data and partitions from the drive.

www.seagate.com

 

[USAFRet]

For future reference, when doing a clone operation...your very first action needs to be:

Power OFF
Disconnect the old drive
Power up and allow the system to try to boot from the new drive by itself.

 

[winston_white86]

ok will do its bedtime work in afew will check when i get off work when i have the time to unplug and i do have a backup made just in case something goes wrong

thxs for the help will keep yall posted thxs much