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Question

Renaming hard drive without formatting it.

May 23, 2016 5:52PM PDT

I cloned a platter type hard drive to a SSD sometime ago and just left the old hard drive disconnected because I didn't think I would ever use it. All the data and programs are still on it.
Is it possible to relabel that drive say drive X and hook it back up and use it without doing a format on it. If so, how is it done? Would like to get into a couple old programs I had on it, but don't have on the new SSD.
The SSD is getting pretty tight on available space.
Thank you.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Sorry
May 23, 2016 5:56PM PDT

The computer has Windows 7 if that makes a difference.

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Answer
Rename is simple. Just do that.
May 23, 2016 6:06PM PDT

Now if you want to change a drive letter other than the boot C drive, again, just do it.

Want to reletter Drive C and something to C. PC explodes.

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Thanks
May 23, 2016 6:31PM PDT

I had thought of that, but wanted to make sure it could be done that easily.
Will try that in the morning.
I do want to give it the drive letter X as it is C right now which is also the letter of the SSD which is the boot drive.

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Changing the boot drive letter is treachorous.
May 23, 2016 8:08PM PDT

And again, not supported. You can move the drive you want to be C into the boot drive connection (usually lowest numbered SATA port and see if it boots. Then move the SSD to another port and retest. Windows assigns letters in well, at first it sounds like a mystery and it's all on the web but I can't condense it to less than what will fit here.

So I'll pause here.

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Answer
Clone
May 23, 2016 9:10PM PDT

If you cloned the hdd>ssd how is it these old programs are not on the ssd?

If you want to run these old programs using the hdd disconnect the ssd from sata 0 and connect the hdd to sata 0....boot it up.

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Thanks again
May 23, 2016 9:30PM PDT

I had removed those programs and files from the SSD because I used them very little and the SSD was getting tight on space.
Good idea on just swapping the HDD back to sata 0 temporarily.
It would have been a temporary thing anyway. Just trying to do it without the swapping sata ports back and forth.

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Answer
Make sure to check your partition table type.
May 24, 2016 8:02AM PDT

Just one side note, if your partition table is GPT not MBR you'll have issues when you connect both drives to the computer at the same time. GPT uses a GUID (globally unique identifier) code to identify the partition, but you can't mount two partitions with the same GUID on the same computer.

If it's MBR, you're fine though.

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Answer
Bias
Jun 5, 2016 7:28AM PDT