Cloned Windows Disk to larger SSD. Old SSD still showing in Disk Management. Can't change Drive Letters.

lafargeotte · Tuesday at 2:34 PM

Hi,

A friend has cloned his Windows drive from 128GB to 1TB, no problem.

He changed the disks, i.e. removed old disk and replaced it with new disk.
System boots fine, however Windows is now 'G', and in Disk Management the old disk is still showing as 'C' even though it is not attached!
He therefore cannot change the new disk to 'C'.

Any ideas please how to remove the old disk from Disk Management, it is not in the system.

Thanks in advance.

Berton · Tuesday at 3:16 PM

What type of drives connections, SATA or NVMe M.2? Check the BIOS to see what is listed for attached drives and what is set on either 0 or 1, whatever the original drive was plugged into. The Operating System takes it clues as to what the motherboard has from the listings in the BIOS. A SATA drive can be either HDD/Hard Disk Drive [2.5" or 3.5"] or SSD/Solid State Drive [2.5"]. NVMe M.2 is SSD. There's another type, eMMC, soldered onto the motherboard and not changeable.

lafargeotte · Tuesday at 3:43 PM

Hi, they are SATA drives.
I will ask my friend about what the BIOS shows.

lafargeotte · Tuesday at 4:07 PM

My friend now informs me that he tried to boot from the new disk when it was connected by USB! It failed, then he put it into the PC, and now he has this problem.
Would that have caused this problem?

glasskuter · Tuesday at 5:26 PM

It's kind of hard for us to give a specific answer without a copy of his disk management. Just guessing here, but possibly the new drive is showing up the same size as the old one. Depending on what tool he used to clone with, all the extra space may not have been included in his system partition. Some tools offer manual resizing options, while others resize proportionally when cloning to a disk of a different size.

lafargeotte · Wednesday at 12:19 PM

Well, I have just spoken to my friend, who is zero informed on computers. Why he did this without help I don't know.

Anyway, he does indeed have a ghost drive in his BIOS, and in Windows 11. In Windows 11 it is clear that he did not extend when doing the cloning, as he has an extra drive with 800mb free (the rest of the new SSD). I am hoping that I can get him to redo the cloning properly, hopefully that will resolve the issue.

I will come back when I know more.

lafargeotte · Wednesday at 1:44 PM

Would a repair install of Windows 11 resolve this problem?

spapakons · Wednesday at 2:26 PM

You cannot charge the Windows partition drive letter from inside Windows. You need to download a WinPE ISO (aka Windows Live ISO), that has a dedicated utility to fix the drive letters and do it from there. One such ISO is Sergei Strelec WinPE which also contains many other tools. Find it here:

WinPE 10-8 Sergei Strelec English » Sergei Strelec

Bootable disk Windows 11, 10 and 8 PE - for maintenance of computers, hard disks and partitions, backup and restore disks and partitions, computer diagnostics, data recovery, Windows installation.

sergeistrelec.name

Use Rufus or other suitable utility to create a bootable USB flash drive from the ISO:

Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way

Rufus: Create bootable USB drives the easy way

rufus.ie

Once you boot it you see a list of options. You can load WinPE in Windows 11 or 10. Choose one and wait to load. Then click on the start button to see a list of tools. Find the one about drive letters and run it.

glasskuter · Wednesday at 3:19 PM

lafargeotte said:
Would a repair install of Windows 11 resolve this problem?

No. Neither will the tools Spankanos suggested. Those tools can not extend a partition into non-consecutive space. I'm 99% sure the unallocated space will NOT be consecutive as the recovery partition will be between your system partition and the unallocated space. Not even disk management can extend a partition into non-consecutive space. You will have to use a Disk Partitioning software like Minitool Partition Wizard MiniTool Products Download Center
You can use a Minitool boot disk to do most anything disk related including extending partition and changing drive letter.

hsehestedt · Wednesday at 3:38 PM

lafargeotte said:
He changed the disks, i.e. removed old disk and replaced it with new disk.

I would suggest that he did NOT remove the old drive. I think that he removed the wrong drive. If disk management is still showing the original drive, then the original drive is still there!

Also, I have another suggestion: Many people find that it works out better for them to make an image of the OS drive, then restore that image to the new drive rather than performing a clone operation. The reason for this is that this method avoids creating a duplicate disk ID which can result in a disk ID collision. However, had he truly removed the original drive, then this too would not be a problem.

spapakons · Wednesday at 4:30 PM

The proper method is to clone the old drive on a new drive but then shutdown and remove the original drive before booting the new drive for the first time. This should avoid messing with the drive letters.

p5200 · Wednesday at 4:44 PM

Could he repeat the cloning but, remove original drive before booting this time?

gunrunnerjohn · Wednesday at 4:53 PM

p5200 said:
Could he repeat the cloning but, remove original drive before booting this time?

I think I'm going to agree with this approach. Do it right this time and stop trying to repair the screwed up copy!

lafargeotte · 2025-05-22T02:03:04-0400

Thanks guys.
Would a clean installation of Windows 11 on the new disk solve this?

glasskuter · 2025-05-22T02:50:48-0400

YES it would fix it. . Make sure all other drives are disconnected during the install process. Also make sure all partitions on the drive are deleted and windows is installed on unallocated space. See step 10 here Clean Install Windows 11

Also note: By default during a clean install, if a Microsoft account is used, Documents, Desktop, Pictures, and Videos folder location will be Onedrive. If you want these folders to be in his user account under C:\users\hisusername you will need to use the workaround in step 15 to create a local account.

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