[SOLVED] re-initialise a used drive

[barryporter069]

For my laptop I initialised a new M2 NGFF 512Gb drive and gave it a drive letter. This new drive was then used to clone my C: drive (which is also an M2 NGFF, but only 120Gb and thus too small). This new drive is still connected as an external drive but the first partition shows up with the drive letter assigned during initialisation, whereas on the original C: drive that partition is not assigned a letter. When placed inside the laptop the computer could not boot up because of a conflict with drive letters. However, none of the other drives or partitions has the same drive letter as this.
Can I reinitialise this new [now initialised] drive without assigning a letter to it?
Have I any other alternatives?
Thank you.

 

[RealBeast]

Sure, with the new drive attached open an elevated command prompt (right click run as admin) and then type:
diskpart
list disk
select disk n (where n = the number for the new drive from the list command -- be *careful* to select correctly)
clean
exit

That will erase all data and make the drive unpartitioned, you can then either re-clone it or use disk management to initialize and format.