HDD upgrade / drive letters

What ho one and all,

Having taken on board the replies regarding SMART info, I'm on the next stage of my hdd upgrade, copying data to the new drives using desktop USB caddies.

The plan is to use a current external 1tb as the Disk 0 upgrade. First format using my caddie into one, large partition and call it what? Can't be C: because that already exists, so how about Z:?

The alternative approach is to install the OS to the 1tbhdd while it is in the caddie, but again, there cannot be two C: So what happens?

Confused; you better believe it!

Toodle pip and thanks

Rex

Actually Windows does see the boot drive as C:\, no matter where it is.

USB, I do not really worry about the drive letter, but I do name them.

Open This PC, r-click and select rename. Started doing that because it told me which hdd on my LAN I was dealing with and use it with my USB drives too.

EDITED to add the attachment.
C and E are on a 260 GB SSD.
F is a 2 TB hdd

old C and H are on the third hdd.

Hope that helps. And yes old C is bootable.

If you had two Windows bootable drives in a computer, whichever one you have the CMOS/BIOS set to boot from first will be assigned drive letter "C:" as Windows starts to load. And if there are no other drives in the computer, Windows will then assign drive letter "D:" to the other drive.

If you were then to go into the CMOS/BIOS Setup and set the other drive to be the first one to try and boot from, Windows will then assign drive letter "C:" to it as it starts to load, and assign drive letter "D:" to the other.

Make sense?

Thanks. I'm running XP so not so sure what This PC is.

However, at no time do I envisage having two bootable drives. I figure, format the new 1tb in the caddy. When complete, install in the computer as Disk 0 and restore the os image from the second hdd. I imagine that now I will have a 1tb bootable hdd , called C: Since I have partition software installed and it will be with the image, I will then be able to create the additional partitions.

Seems straightforward but never having done it before, I'm sure it is unlikely to be that easy. Or am I mistaken?

"XP" is a Windows product from Microsoft.

During the process of partitioning and formatting the drives, it doesn't really much matter what drive letter is assigned where.

When you remove the drives and reconnect them in a different order, during the bootup process, Windows (all versions), will automatically assign drive letters to available partitions and drives as it is booting up. And, the partition it boots from will be assigned drive letter "C:".

Note that you can change the drive letter to a particular partition or drive in Disk Manager.

This PC is Win 10 for My computer in XP

Where I learned the renaming trick.

Labelling the hdd is what I did.
http://www.digitalcitizen.life/4-way...-drive-windows

Sorry to labour the point; if I partition the drive while in the caddy and give the partitions drive letters, P,Q,R,S (for example) with P being the one to take the os when I install the hdd in the computer as Disk 0, and restore the os to the first partition, windows will automatically change the drive letters to C,D,E,F?

If you move the dvd burner/player, you can make that happen.

I would expect the letters to change to C, E, F, G
With D being the CDrom.

With XP, I would change the cdrom to R , and change the other Letters on hdd 0.
But by the time I had the 3rd IDE hdd installed, I started Labelling as that did NOT change. And with up to 6 hdds installed, labelling was the easiest way to keep things straight. C to M were hdd partitions and R and S were dvd burners.But do remember that was with the smaller ide hdds.