Moving GPT disk from SATA-USB adaptor to M/B SATA - reinit partition

I've just bought a 4 TB hard disk. I initially connected it to a SATA-to-USB caddy adaptor so I could copy data from an existing disk to the new one.

When Windows 7 first saw the disk, it was not initialised and I was prompted to chose between MBR and GPT partition: I chose GPT because I wanted one 4 TB partition rather than hitting MBR's 2 TB limit. I then needed to format the disk as NTFS. Fine - as expected.

Having copied about 1 TB of data from the existing data disk, I shutdown the PC, removed the old 1 TB drive from the motherboard SATA connector and connected the new 4 TB disk in its place.

But when I booted up, Windows did not recognise the partition and said that the disk was uninitialised, so I had to go through the whole process of creating a 4 TB GPT partition, formatting it and copying the data again.

Is this to be expected? Is there something about GPT or 4 TB disks which means that if you move a drive from a SATA-to-USB adaptor to the motherboard SATA, Windows will not recognise it and the partition must be created again?

I've confirmed that shutting the PC down and removing power, before booting again, does not provoke the problem.

Is there any other info you need to diagnose what went wrong. I want to be sure that the data is not going to disappear again before I delete the old copies of the data Luckily I have backups on other drives if anything goes wrong again.

The mode can do it if you change that the caddy may have been set to ide mode

I think you did everything right. And don't think that it has something to do with the SATA-to-USB caddy adapter.
Are the caddy adapter and the HDD new?