Remove old hard drive

[starkmccall]

I bought a 1TB hard drive to replace my 128gb one. I removed my old one and installed my new one. I also cloned everything from the old one to the new one. How do I make the new hard drive the default? Even though my old one is removed, it's still showing. I'm very new at this and I'm unsure as to where to go from here. I included a screenshot as well.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, starkmccall.

It's physically disconnected, but you can still see it!? I must admit that this is the first I've ever heard of this. Would you please open Disk Management and post a screenshot of what you see there (you can use imgur.com to upload the image)? Here's how to open it: How to access Disk Management in Windows to manage hard drives.

Basically when you clone a drive, the destination drive should have the exact same information and when you remove the source drive, your new HDD becomes your main (OS drive). However, sometimes you may need to go to your BIOS/UEFI and make sure that the new drive is the first booting device. If it's not, you can change that from the boot priority options.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[starkmccall]

Hey there, starkmccall.

It's physically disconnected, but you can still see it!? I must admit that this is the first I've ever heard of this. Would you please open Disk Management and post a screenshot of what you see there (you can use imgur.com to upload the image)? Here's how to open it: How to access Disk Management in Windows to manage hard drives.

Basically when you clone a drive, the destination drive should have the exact same information and when you remove the source drive, your new HDD becomes your main (OS drive). However, sometimes you may need to go to your BIOS/UEFI and make sure that the new drive is the first booting device. If it's not, you can change that from the boot priority options.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

Hey Boogieman_WD,

Thanks for responding!
I just got off the phone with dell technical support. They said I removed the storage drive and not the mSATA? I guess that explains why the old drive is showing up.

Here's that screenshot of Disk Management:

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Well, that would explain it. From what I can see in Disk Management, there are definitely 2 OS drives connected to the computer. You can reformat the old one if you wish and use it as a secondary storage drive, for some extra space. I'd just advise you to make sure that you can properly boot to Windows without it being connected to the motherboard, before you reformat it.

Let me know if anything else comes up. Cheers!

 

[starkmccall]

Well, that would explain it. From what I can see in Disk Management, there are definitely 2 OS drives connected to the computer. You can reformat the old one if you wish and use it as a secondary storage drive, for some extra space. I'd just advise you to make sure that you can properly boot to Windows without it being connected to the motherboard, before you reformat it.

Let me know if anything else comes up. Cheers!

Ok cool! I was wondering if I could just reformat it. Do you know how do I check to make sure the new OS properly runs before I reformat the old one? Does the windows install clone as well?
Sorry for the all the questions! I appreciate your help!

 

[Boogieman_WD]

No worries. After all you have to ask in order to learn.

The only way to be completely sure that everything is working fine, is to disconnect all the drives from your computer except for the new one (which you've used for the clone). Start your computer and if it boots properly to Windows and everything seems to be OK, then it should be safe to format your old drive so that you can make a new partition for secondary storage.
If you've cloned the whole drive, then yes, each partition along with the data should be on the clone just as it was on your original (the source HDD) drive and that includes the OS (operating system, which is Windows in your case) as well. From what I see, you've completely cloned your entire drive.

 

[starkmccall]

No worries. After all you have to ask in order to learn.

The only way to be completely sure that everything is working fine, is to disconnect all the drives from your computer except for the new one (which you've used for the clone). Start your computer and if it boots properly to Windows and everything seems to be OK, then it should be safe to format your old drive so that you can make a new partition for secondary storage.
If you've cloned the whole drive, then yes, each partition along with the data should be on the clone just as it was on your original (the source HDD) drive and that includes the OS (operating system, which is Windows in your case) as well. From what I see, you've completely cloned your entire drive.

Ok I will test it out and see how it goes

Edit:

It's working perfectly!

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Awesome, now all that's left is to reformat your old drive (the 128GB one) so that you have a single 119.12GB partition, which you can use to store data.

 

[starkmccall]

Awesome, now all that's left is to reformat your old drive (the 128GB one) so that you have a single 119.12GB partition, which you can use to store data.

I finished reformatting it! Thank you so much for all your help, I've learned a lot

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Sure thing.

Let me know if there's anything else.

 

[starkmccall]

Sure thing.

Let me know if there's anything else.

Will do