SSD OS Migration question

[Tunnelcat]

OK, great. By the way, are the disk drive serial numbers contained somewhere in the BIOS out of curiosity? Did I not look deep enough?

[Krom]

Depends on the motherboard/bios. It reads it, but it isn't a requirement to actually display it. I've seen the full serial number displayed in some, and I've seen just the model/firmware (like above) in others.

[Tunnelcat]

Krom, when I plugged in the old OS drive and booted, I ended up this setup. On disk 0, which is the Samsung Boot drive, I've got what's called a Data Partition that's 100 MB and the (C:) partition with the OS. The old OS drive is now called disk 1, which has on it a System Reserved (E:) 100 MB partition and the now blank old OS partition with is now called the (F:) partition. (I did a quick format to clear out the old OS files). My game drive is now disk 2 and still called (D:).

That (E:) System Reserved partition is also empty on this (F:) drive. Should I delete that partition, and will Windows rename what's called the Data Partition on the (C:) drive to System Reserved? I want to make sure I've got Windows seeing the right System Reserved partition on the (C:) drive.

[Krom]

Delete the system reserved off the old OS drive also...

Actually, because even after a quickformat both those partitions are probably still marked as active...go into an administrator command prompt and run: diskpart
Type: list disk which should display a list of attached disks
The old OS drive should be disk 1, but verify it by checking the size
If so, type: select disk 1
You can further verify it is the correct drive by typing: list partition (it should display the 100 MB and 1 TB partitions)
Once you are sure it is the old OS drive, type: clean
Note, it will not ask or warn you of anything, but clean will instantly delete ALL the partition tables on the selected disk and reset it back to its original uninitialized state.

You can then exit diskpart by typing exit.
Go into disk mangement and it should ask you if you wish to initialize the new disk, you do, using MBR, quickformat it ntfs and assign it to E: and you should be done. If it doesn't ask, reboot and then load it up, it should ask then.

[Tunnelcat]

Ok, here's what I did since I couldn't get back here for your answer because our net went down for hours today. Fortunately that happened after I'd done some research, although I didn't have the warm and fuzzies doing what I was about to do. I knew for sure which drive was the old OS drive, which was Disk 1 of course, so I crossed my fingers and went back into disk management. I deleted all data in both partitions on the old OS drive, which were labeled (E:) and (F:). Then I expanded the old 100MB System Reserved partition, (E:) into the old OS partition, (F:) and created one single partition over the whole drive, cleared the label and made sure the drive letter was now (E:). I also performed another format just to make sure the drive was empty and nothing was marked as "active". Do I still need to run diskpart on that drive, or am I all set? My original game drive is still called (D:) with all it's data intact thankfully.

Now on my Samsung OS (C:) drive, that smaller 100MB partition did NOT have a drive letter, which appears it's not supposed to have for system security. It was labeled "Data" however, a weird result of the cloning I presume? I relabeled it back to what it was called originally in the OS before the cloning procedure, which was "System Reserved", and Windows appears to be happy with that. What a hairball. I hope my lame attempt at "repairing" hasn't screwed things up. The system still booted OK and worked fine all day today, except for the net being down. I'll see what happens tomorrow after an overnight reboot.

[Krom]

So did you delete the old partitions and then create a new one? Or did you delete F: and then expand E: to fill the remaining space? I would say it'd be a better idea to delete them both, so the whole drive is empty and then recreate a new partition to fill the whole thing, since that doesn't take any more time and is a better guarantee of avoiding any weird alignment/sector size issues (although it *should* be ok).

You can tell if a partition is active in disk management by looking at the graphical representation or the status, for instance the 100 MB partition on the SSD should say "Healthy (System, Active, Primary partition)". The two hard drives should only say "Healthy (Primary Partition)".

[Tunnelcat]

Yeah, I deleted the contents in both partitions and did a quick reformat of BOTH the (E:) and (F:) partitions separately, then expanded (E:) into (F:) to create the one big partition. Sloppy, but it seems to have worked. Both of the HHD's single partition say "Healthy (Primary Partition)" and both (D:), my game drive, and the (F:) drive, list the same volumes now. That 100MB partition on the SSD says "(Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)". I gather it was OK to rename it to "System Reserved"? The main SSD (C:) partition says "Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)". This partition is not marked "Active" though. Does all this sound OK to you? Also, do you think I need to run a more thorough reformat of that old OS drive that's now the (F:) drive before installing games on it?

[Krom]

The system reserved partition is the only one that needs to be active, it is where the boot loader actually is on modern windows installs. The volume label is probably irrelevant, since it is the only active partition BIOS will only try to boot from there regardless of what it is named.

Deleting the contents isn't the same as deleting the actual partitions, granted formatting should get rid of everything so there shouldn't be any left over hidden files, but next time instead of formatting and then resizing or extending partitions, you should just delete them entirely and create a new one in their place. Way less room for confusion that way.

There is no need to do a full format. For reference; the difference between quick and "regular" formats is: both delete the master file tables (MFT) and write out new ones, while a regular format then surface scans and writes zeroes to the entire volume (which is what makes it so time consuming). That is why you only need a regular format if you suspect there is a problem with the drive (mainly defects in the media).

[Tunnelcat]

Now that you've given me the administrative command option method, I'll do that next time if need to ever do it again. Thanks for your help.