Cloning to SSD then swapping drive letters

SamHobbs said:

Please see Change, add, or remove a drive letter - Windows Help. That describes how to specify a drive letter for a drive. The assigned letter will remain assigned to the drive even if it is offline.

I am posting this because some members are not aware of it. We can control what letter is used for a drive instead of getting whatever Windows assigns to it.

However - drive letters stick only in the operating system running at the time. In your case you have Windows on a HDD and you want to clone it to the SSD. After cloning - but still running Windows from the HDD you can assign the Windows partition on the SSD any drive letter you want EXCEPT C:. Then when you change the boot order to the SSD and actually run Windows from the SSD, the Windows partition on the SSD will change to C: and all your other HDDs and partitions will get new drive letters.

Likewise once you boot from Windows on the SSD - you can assign the old Windows partition on the HDD any drive letter you want EXCEPT C:. If you then go back and boot from the HDD - the Windows partition on the SSD will revert back to the drive letter you first assigned to it when you were running Windows from the HDD previously and your HDD Windows partition will be C:.

The partition that the current Windows is running from will almost 100% of the time get drive letter C: when Windows is loaded from it.

I have found Migrate system partition to a new disk - Microsoft Community. The good news is that he seems to be able to have done what I want to do but unfortunately he does not know how he did it.

NavyLCDR said:

Then when you change the boot order to the SSD and actually run Windows from the SSD, the Windows partition on the SSD will change to C: and all your other HDDs and partitions will get new drive letters.

That is not how it worked for the person in the discussion I just linked to, right? Dženan says "the SSD has drive letter F:" even after booting from it, correct?

SamHobbs said:

That is not how it worked for the person in the discussion I just linked to, right? Dženan says "the SSD has drive letter F:" even after booting from it, correct?

He never booted into Windows from the SSD.

NavyLCDR said:

He never booted into Windows from the SSD.

It is not clear. I assume he did but it is not clear. Regardless, he was doing essentially the same thing as what I want to do and he got it working. He said "swap drive letters for partitions C: and F:" and "make F: partition become C:". He said he was able to "make computer accept that SSD partition is both system and boot" and we know that that would require that the SSD be the C:, right? He did it, so how can it be done?

I have created Swapping drive letters, including boot volume - Microsoft Community.

We have told you how to migrate to an SSD.

Clone your current HDD to the SSD using either direct cloning or by transferring an image over (recommended way). If you are going to use Macrium Reflect Free to do it (recommended way) then make a Macrium Reflect Rescue USB or CD/DVD while you are at it. Make sure you have a valid boot partition on the SSD:

For a GPT disk booting with an UEFI bios you will see a small FAT32 EFI partition that is the boot partition. If you have an MBR disk booting with a legacy bios you will either see a separate small System Reserved Partition which will be marked as active or if your boot files happen to be in the Windows partition itself, then the Windows partition will have to be marked as active.

Make sure your bios is set to boot from the SSD - or disconnect your old boot HDD (recommended way), and boot from the SSD. That's it. You don't have to mess with changing any drive letters. When the SSD boots into Windows the Windows partition on the SSD will get C:.

You can take our word for it, whom many of us have already done this hundreds of times cumulatively - or you can mess around in your post on the other forum by some guy who states, "Well, I got it working, but not sure how."

Sometimes, on rare occasions the boot loader in the boot partition will need to be fixed and the easiest and most surefire way of doing that has been with a Macrium Reflect Rescue USB/DVD using the fix windows startup problems utility under the restore menu.

Maybe this helps: SSD - Install and Transfer the Operating System - Windows 7 Help Forums

The Samsung Data Migration tool will do everything in the article. The article does not cover the part I am asking about. I did not read any of the 88 pages of commentary after the article.

It is now working the way I wanted it to.

The important thing to do is, when the Samsung Data Migration software says to disable the antivirus software, don't ignore that. When I did the clone without McAfee everything fell in place.

For the record, it boots the SSD and makes the hard drive D: unless the SSD is disconnected. If the SSD is disconnected then it boots the hard drive and makes the hard drive the C:. The system on the hard drive is intact.