Solved - HDD and SSD problems

Dim Reaper

This is not directly 3D related, but I am hoping someone might have some ideas.

My current pc started out with Windows 7 Pro, which allows you to move the user profiles.  As It had only a small SSD at the time, I move the user profiles to the E: drive several years ago.  Since then, I have updated to Windows 10, which does not allow you to move user profiles.  The E: drive (Programs:) is a 2TB HDD contains the user profiles and most of my software, including Daz Studio and content.  Having the user profiles on the drive affects the startup time of Windows, so earlier this week I bought a 1TB SSD, moved all my Poser and Daz content off the E: drive and then attempted to clone the drive to the SSD using Macrium Reflect.  Unfortunately, Windows failed to recognise it as the same drive when I swapped the two drives, meaning that I couldn't log into Windows.

After a few days of pondering, today I made a bootable USB drive with Macrium Reflect, booted from that, made a disk image of the E: drive, switched off the pc, swapped to the SSD, booted from USB again and imaged the drive.  Finally, I restarted and...it worked!  Windows is accepting the new SSD as the E: drive with user profiles and software.

Now comes the next problem - I want to put the 2TB HDD back in so that I can use it exclusively for my 3D content and have plenty of space on the drive for the future.  The problem is, which I reattach the drive to a new SATA port, Windows kicks off the new SSD and goes back to recognising the original E: drive.  The only option I can think of now is to remove the HDD drive, put it in another pc and reformat it then try adding it again, but the drive is screwed in and is going to be very difficult to remove from the case. 

All of the problems seem to stem from Windows trying to be helpful in recognising drives themselves, rather than from the SATA prort that they are attached to.  Does anyone have any suggestions before I am forced to remove a graphics card just to get at the drive screws?

itachan

Hello,

I would recommend that you boot on a Linux or windows USB key and use it to reformat the disk.

mclaugh

Have you tried changing the drive letter of the HDD?

Dim Reaper

itachan said:

Hello,

I would recommend that you boot on a Linux or windows USB key and use it to reformat the disk.

Having used a USB boot for Macronis, I don't know why I didn't think of this.  Thank you - this might be the easiest method.

 

mclaugh said:

Have you tried changing the drive letter of the HDD?

Thank you for the suggestion, but unfortunately, this isn't an option because I can't have both drives attached at the same time.  As soon as the old drive is attached, it becomes E: again.  If I rename it to say, K, then Windows will flag K: as the drive with user profiles.

Dim Reaper

Having loaded up Windows from USB and accessed Fdisk, I couldn't identify the specific drive because they get moved into a different order and given numbers instead of drive letters.  I finally caved in, removed the gfx card, unscrewed the drive caddy, put the drive in another pc and reformatted it there.  Even then, for some reason the Oculus rift software put a "Programs" folder on it when I reinstalled the drive, but this was easily solvable.

So now finally, I have a pc that boots up at SSD speeds, and have a 2TB drive for Daz and Poser content.

The only downside is that now I've started to copy my Daz Content folder back over and Windows is estimating 3.5 hours.  That's the price of being a long-term Dazaholic.