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Question

Reversed drives

Jul 21, 2019 1:46AM PDT

Some Wonderkind at Dell sent me a refurb computer laptop with the hard drives backwards...I have a 2TB OS and a 256GB storage.

So I tried Dell's recovery USB stick. It restored some settings. So I tried a clean install. Windows never gave me a choice of drives top install on.

I am feeling old...and I feel Windows is protecting me from what I want to do. Anyone have any suggestions?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re:drives
Jul 21, 2019 2:19AM PDT

Disconnect the drive you don't want the OS on. Then try the recovery stick or the clean install on the only drive that's left (the 256 GB one).

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Answer
FWIW
Jul 21, 2019 2:55AM PDT

Not knowing what you mean by "backwards", what you have and what you may have had, let me suggest that your smaller 256GB drive should contain the OS and the larger 2TB drive should contain your personal files. It's common today for the OS to be on an SSD but you didn't mention what type of drives these are. The SSD would be much faster so the OS goes there. This type of setup simplifies the practice of performing backups. At minimum, you should have a plan that allows for quick and easy recovery of the OS. Full imaging software does a nice job of this and allows a drive to be restored to the last imaging date within minutes. You'd want to make sure your personal work was backed up too so having an external drive of at least the same capacity of your larger internal drive would accomplish that.

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I agree
Jul 21, 2019 3:11AM PDT

The fast smaller drive should have the OS...Dell just switched the two. I found a $40 gui to fix it, betting the was a better way

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Answer
Found a solution
Jul 21, 2019 3:08AM PDT

AOMEI managed it, after I registered

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Re: Aomei
Jul 21, 2019 4:10AM PDT

Can you tell how you fixed it? And were it physical drives or just partitions? If it were two partitions on the same physical drive, there's no speed difference.

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The 'fix'
Jul 21, 2019 9:45PM PDT

I had 1 physical drive (solid state) at 256 GB(E:\) and one 2TB(C:\) physical drive
First, I backed up and downloaded windows on a usb
Then I used a program called AOMEI which formatted and copied what was on drive c:\ onto drive E:\, then formatted C:\. While keeping the drive names.
Then I messed up? and deleted the boot partition while Windows was running on E:\ (2GB), which was still on C:\ (2TB drive)
Then I went to reinstall off the USB, and the code actually asked me where to install, either because it was an older installer or because NEITHER drive had a boot record.
I ended up formatting both, and installed on the 256 GB (now C:\) and D:\, it's newly formatted drive

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In other words
Jul 22, 2019 3:00AM PDT

you've done a clean installation of Windows which would require you to restore any personal files from backup? That would work. Just as an FIY, the drive letter and drive name are two different things. The operating system determines the drive letter. A drive name may be suggested during formatting but you can change the name. If you have two operational PCs with one machine showing a drive letter of C: but attach it to another PC's MB port, the drive letter may change. It would return to the old drive letter if you put it back into the original machine. Drive letters don't follow the physical drive. As well, the cloning software doesn't do formatting prior to moving data as a partition. The format of the partition is already there. This can get real confusing when using cloning software because it will not recognize the drive letter scheme in the same manner that Windows does. It may well call a drive by one letter but, once you boot with Windows, it will have a different letter. This can make one's head spin at times. Glad things worked out.

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Yup...
Jul 22, 2019 11:59AM PDT

I was fine with a clean instillation of windows. The steps that did not work, however, were using Dell's recovery partition on a usb and asking Windows to do a clean installation from inside Windows using the clean installation option. Both did their work and never gave me a choice on which drive to put which drive letter on.

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Answer
Use FDISK
Jul 21, 2019 5:55PM PDT

FDISK will allow you to delete both partitions, then partition/assign C-drive to a small size like 256 gig, and format it with FDISK or format. Partition/assign D,E, F partitions as you want. Windows will always install to the C-drive by default.