PITA to replace my C: Drive

[Mister Natural]

my small C: was a 1st gen 64GB SSD that served me well but was totally full and starting to act a little hincky. Used only for Microsoft stuff and boot. I have a newer Crucial m500 256GB SSD for LIVE9 and various VST and a third drive - a WD green 500GB HDD for samples, projects, soundsets, etc.
First, I thought because there was plenty enough room on the 256 SSD, I'd make a partition there and clone the C: drive to that. I then learned that to clone a disk, you need to start with a clean, formatted target drive. Didn't want to re-install everything on that disk & so to plan B.
Newegg to the rescue for a Sandisk 128GB SSD. After figgering out how to get windows to recognize a new drive that wasn't formatted yet, I used free EaseUS disk manager to clone the C: to the new drive & thought I could just re-name that C: . . . nope.
Then swapped the cable from the old C: to the new C: and tidied-up the insides with a new dual 2.5" mounting bracket. VOILA - the computer recognized the new C: as C: (what luck as I didn't know how it was gonna boot otherwise !)

color me happy after too much anxiety today !

[UltimateOutsider]

I have three 2TB SATA drives in my PC and it is a fricking nightmare whenever I have to replace a drive. I always have to map out which SATA cable goes to which port, and write down drive and partition assignments in Windows before yanking a drive. Sometimes it even involves editing the Windows boot configuration from a command line in repair mode. What a headache this stuff can be sometimes.

Glad you're up and running now though.

[UltraJv]

Windows system backup/restore - its built into Windows 7 and 8 (hidden a bit in W8 )