Replacing internal hard drive/disc with new one

strollin said:

You cannot format the drive you booted from. You will need to get the new drive running and boot from it, then you will be able to delete the partitions from the old drive and format it.

If your system is running fine with your old drive and all that you want to do is upgrade to a new, larger drive there is no need to re-install Windows. You can "clone" the original drive to the new drive and keep everything in tact. If you re-install Windows you will also need to re-install all of your programs and you will need to backup/backup restore all of your data. Cloning eliminates all of that additional work.

You could use the free tool, Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download, to do the cloning.

I want to remove everything off my current drive and replace it with a new drive. The problem I'm having is not being able to right click the C drive to format it, and that theres 2 drives the C and D which have equal capacity which I want to format, but not sure how to format them both together.

Boozad said:

You can't format the C: drive as that's what Windows is installed onto and it can't format itself. As mentioned, you'll have to install Windows on your new drive, then attach the old drive and format it that way.

Ah yes this makes sense, thanks.

Ok, last question- and I appreciate the help so far- what I'm going to do is open up my PC, add the new hard drive and attach wires from old to new, install windows, then switch wires back to old hard drive and format the C and D drives, then remove and dispose of old HD. Have I got that right?

Boozad said:

No. You're good up to this point:

nofttss said:

what I'm going to do is open up my PC, add the new hard drive and attach wires from old to new, install windows

What you can't do is this:

nofttss said:

then switch wires back to old hard drive and format the C and D drives, then remove and dispose of old HD. Have I got that right?

If you switch the wires back you'll be booting from your old drive again. You'll need to add the old drive as well as your new drive, you'd have to boot from the new with the old one attached as a secondary drive to be able to format it.

This makes sense too.

I haven't opened up my PC yet, are there wires for an additional hard drive in there?

And how do I choose which one to boot from when I turn on the PC (assuming both are attached)?