I have a small SSD C:\ drive and therefore have installed most of my programs on a second drive D:. I now want to replace that platter drive with an M.2 SSD for improved performance. I have cloned the drive onto the M.2, but am unsure of how to make the new M.2 my D:\ drive.
I am familiar with the Disk Management utility and can change drive letters, but since this one is part of my system, it is a more complicated matter. My first thought is to use an external boot disk and then use the drive utility as I normally would to change drive letters, making the current D:\ drive something else, then make the M.2 the D:\ drive. Is this a viable solution?
51 Answer
The way you have it setup is perfect! This is something I've done plenty of times and is really easy. Since both the original disk and new disk are clones and neither is needed to boot, all you have to do is swap drive letters.
- Keep the boot and original platter disk connected.
- Add the cloned disk and power up the machine.
- When the system is up, open the Disk Management tool, choose the original disk and select Change Drive Letter but instead of changing the latter, click on the Remove button.
- Choose the new disk and select Change Drive Letter again but this time use the Add button to assign the same letter as the original disk (D:).
- Close everything and restart the system.
