Need help with cloning C drive

JonnyB76 · Feb 21, 2015

I have just cloned my C drive, (boot drive), from HDD to SSD following a guide I found online and everything seems to be ok apart from 1 part of the guide and I was hoping someone with more experience/knowledge could tell me if the part I am struggling with is important, and if it is, then how to do it.

The part that I am struggling with is this:

"Once the cloning process is complete, turn your computer back on and boot from the SSD (you should have an option to press F12 for a boot menu, or you can change your drives' boot order in your BIOS). Open up Windows Explorer and find your original Windows drive. Right-click on it and choose "Format". A Quick Format is fine here; we just need to clear off all that old data."

I have looked on my system and my new SSD is now my C drive, but I don't know how how to find my old C drive in order to format it, and also the old C drive was itself a partition on a HDD that was split into C and D drives, the D drive is still showing.

USAFRet · Feb 21, 2015

First, remove the HDd to verify the system will boot without it.

Then reconnect it and power up. Go into Disk Management, and see what is in there. The two partitions from the HDD will now have different drive letters. Maybe D and E.

JonnyB76 · Feb 21, 2015

USAFRet :

Hi, I have done as you said, and pc boots without old C drive connected, but when i look on my computer the old c drive is there, but it does not have anything associated with it, (ie a drive letter), so how would do this?, sorry if this is stupid question but i am not very good with setting up software type stuff.

USAFRet · Feb 21, 2015

JonnyB76 :

USAFRet :

Hi, I have done as you said, and pc boots without old C drive connected, but when i look on my computer the old c drive is there, but it does not have anything associated with it, (ie a drive letter), so how would do this?, sorry if this is stupid question but i am not very good with setting up software type stuff.

Can you post a pic of your Disk Management windows, showing all the drives and partitions?

ArtPog · Feb 21, 2015

Understand that when you cloned your multi-partitioned HDD to the SSD the cloning program cloned the entire contents of that "source" disk and copied them to the "destination" disk. I'm assuming that when you utilized the disk-cloning program (BTW, what program did you use?) you did not select any option (assuming it existed) to clone individual partitions. It was a straight disk-to-disk cloning operation, yes?

Now I'm presuming in all this that you did indeed correctly clone the contents of your C: & D: partitions to the destination drive. That means, of course, that your SSD's boot partition will be the one you cloned from the HDD. When you say " I don't know how how to find my old C drive in order to format it..." you don't really mean that, do you? I assume what you mean is that you want to format the old D: partition so it will be empty of data, right? First of all the system will not allow you to format the C: (boot) partition on your SSD. And why in the world would you want to do so? But I suppose it's possible I've misunderstood your situation and objectives.

In any event as USAFRet pointed out the new system will contain the data from your old C: partition and also the data from your old D: partition (although I'm not sure why he indicated the partitions would possibly be assigned D: & E: drive letters). The cloned boot partition will be assigned the C: drive letter. If you access Disk Management you will see that reflected.

Now it's possible that while DM does reflect the data from your old D: partition no drive letter assignment has been made to that partition by the system. This is a common occurrence with many systems. So if that's the case you will need to assign a drive letter to that partition in order to access its contents. It's simple to do - just open DM and right-click on the schematic of Partition 2. Select the option "Change Drive Letter and Paths", click Add on the next window and assign a drive letter of your choice from the drop-down box and OK out.

JonnyB76 · Feb 21, 2015

USAFRet :

I have followed the instructions on http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/faq/id-2176231/guide-posting-screenshot-forum.html but when I get to step 4 I do not have the option of using Paste, so I cannot post my screenshot for you, but I will try to describe it: there is an unlettered drive with 224.45GB space free on the list, but it has no associated drive letter, whereas D drive is listed with 225.71GB total space and my C drive is shown as my new SSD with appropriate volume, ::I have just managed to assign a letter to my old C drive, so can I now format it to clear the old data/boot info that was on there safely?, sorry if my terminology is poor.

JonnyB76 · Feb 21, 2015

ArtPog :

Understand that when you cloned your multi-partitioned HDD to the SSD the cloning program cloned the entire contents of that "source" disk and copied them to the "destination" disk. I'm assuming that when you utilized the disk-cloning program (BTW, what program did you use?) you did not select any option (assuming it existed) to clone individual partitions. It was a straight disk-to-disk cloning operation, yes?

Now I'm presuming in all this that you did indeed correctly clone the contents of your C: & D: partitions to the destination drive. That means, of course, that your SSD's boot partition will be the one you cloned from the HDD. When you say " I don't know how how to find my old C drive in order to format it..." you don't really mean that, do you? I assume what you mean is that you want to format the old D: partition so it will be empty of data, right? First of all the system will not allow you to format the C: (boot) partition on your SSD. And why in the world would you want to do so? But I suppose it's possible I've misunderstood your situation and objectives.

In any event as USAFRet pointed out the new system will contain the data from your old C: partition and also the data from your old D: partition (although I'm not sure why he indicated the partitions would possibly be assigned D: & E: drive letters). The cloned boot partition will be assigned the C: drive letter. If you access Disk Management you will see that reflected.

Now it's possible that while DM does reflect the data from your old D: partition no drive letter assignment has been made to that partition by the system. This is a common occurrence with many systems. So if that's the case you will need to assign a drive letter to that partition in order to access its contents. It's simple to do - just open DM and right-click on the schematic of Partition 2. Select the option "Change Drive Letter and Paths", click Add on the next window and assign a drive letter of your choice from the drop-down box and OK out.

I have done as you said and applied a new drive letter to the old C drive, can I now format it safely?, and if yes, then what is the best way to do this?

USAFRet · Feb 21, 2015

ArtPog :

Understand that when you cloned your multi-partitioned HDD to the SSD the cloning program cloned the entire contents of that "source" disk and copied them to the "destination" disk. I'm assuming that when you utilized the disk-cloning program (BTW, what program did you use?) you did not select any option (assuming it existed) to clone individual partitions. It was a straight disk-to-disk cloning operation, yes?

Now I'm presuming in all this that you did indeed correctly clone the contents of your C: & D: partitions to the destination drive. That means, of course, that your SSD's boot partition will be the one you cloned from the HDD. When you say " I don't know how how to find my old C drive in order to format it..." you don't really mean that, do you? I assume what you mean is that you want to format the old D: partition so it will be empty of data, right? First of all the system will not allow you to format the C: (boot) partition on your SSD. And why in the world would you want to do so? But I suppose it's possible I've misunderstood your situation and objectives.

In any event as USAFRet pointed out the new system will contain the data from your old C: partition and also the data from your old D: partition (although I'm not sure why he indicated the partitions would possibly be assigned D: & E: drive letters). The cloned boot partition will be assigned the C: drive letter. If you access Disk Management you will see that reflected.

Now it's possible that while DM does reflect the data from your old D: partition no drive letter assignment has been made to that partition by the system. This is a common occurrence with many systems. So if that's the case you will need to assign a drive letter to that partition in order to access its contents. It's simple to do - just open DM and right-click on the schematic of Partition 2. Select the option "Change Drive Letter and Paths", click Add on the next window and assign a drive letter of your choice from the drop-down box and OK out.

I said "possibly D & E", because it appears there were two partitions on the old drive.
Since the new SSD is C, 2 partitions on the old HDD will be something else.

If there were only one, then it would either be nothing, or "D". Or something else.

JonnyB76 · Feb 22, 2015

HI, thanks for all the help guys, got old drive renumbered and formatted.

ArtPog · Feb 22, 2015

USAFRet :

ArtPog :

Understand that when you cloned your multi-partitioned HDD to the SSD the cloning program cloned the entire contents of that "source" disk and copied them to the "destination" disk. I'm assuming that when you utilized the disk-cloning program (BTW, what program did you use?) you did not select any option (assuming it existed) to clone individual partitions. It was a straight disk-to-disk cloning operation, yes?

Now I'm presuming in all this that you did indeed correctly clone the contents of your C: & D: partitions to the destination drive. That means, of course, that your SSD's boot partition will be the one you cloned from the HDD. When you say " I don't know how how to find my old C drive in order to format it..." you don't really mean that, do you? I assume what you mean is that you want to format the old D: partition so it will be empty of data, right? First of all the system will not allow you to format the C: (boot) partition on your SSD. And why in the world would you want to do so? But I suppose it's possible I've misunderstood your situation and objectives.

In any event as USAFRet pointed out the new system will contain the data from your old C: partition and also the data from your old D: partition (although I'm not sure why he indicated the partitions would possibly be assigned D: & E: drive letters). The cloned boot partition will be assigned the C: drive letter. If you access Disk Management you will see that reflected.

Now it's possible that while DM does reflect the data from your old D: partition no drive letter assignment has been made to that partition by the system. This is a common occurrence with many systems. So if that's the case you will need to assign a drive letter to that partition in order to access its contents. It's simple to do - just open DM and right-click on the schematic of Partition 2. Select the option "Change Drive Letter and Paths", click Add on the next window and assign a drive letter of your choice from the drop-down box and OK out.

I said "possibly D & E", because it appears there were two partitions on the old drive.
Since the new SSD is C, 2 partitions on the old HDD will be something else.

If there were only one, then it would either be nothing, or "D". Or something else.

ArtPog · Feb 22, 2015

Just to clarify...

When the user disk-cloned his old HDD containing two partitions (his boot partition and another partition apparently used for storage) over to his new SSD whatever data/partitions (if any) that existed on the SSD would, of course, be deleted during the disk-cloning operation. I'm sure you're aware of this. So the destination drive - the new SSD - would now contain the two partitions (plus a possible System Reserved partition with an unassigned drive letter) - a C: partition and the user's old second partition (which he referred to as his old D: partition).

You mention the possibility that following the disk-cloning operation the destination drive might contain "possibly D & E" partitions. I really don't see how this could be possible. At least I've never come across such an outcome in this type of scenario as related by the user.

What we have run into from time-to-time in scenarios like this is that the second partition (referenced as the D: partition by the user in this case) is not assigned a drive letter by the system following the disk-cloning operation. Why this occurs is not at all clear to me but it does happen with some frequency in my experience. Anyway it's a simple matter of course to use DM to assign a drive letter to the partition but unfortunately many users are unaware of this and think they've lost all their data that resided on the partition.

USAFRet · Feb 22, 2015

ArtPog :

I was speaking of the old HDD possibly containing the "D & E"
Obviously, the new SSD will be C. If he only cloned that over, no problem.
If both the original C & D partitions were included in the clone, then they would again be C & D on the new SSD.

From the original description:
"I have just cloned my C drive, (boot drive), from HDD to SSD "
...
"I have looked on my system and my new SSD is now my C drive, but I don't know how how to find my old C drive in order to format it, and also the old C drive was itself a partition on a HDD that was split into C and D drives, the D drive is still showing. "

So, the SSD is C, as expected. Good
What is on the old drive? Other drive letters. But it appears he has it worked out, so no worries.

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