XPS 8300, partitions question

First, the 500GB drive does not have the letter 'C', 'C' is the letter assigned to the partition that has Windows installed on it. The other partition(s) that are not assigned a letter can be a recovery partition, EFI system partition, etc. 

If I understand what you wrote, you did not replace the 500GB disk with the 2TB disk after cloning it, the 500GB remains your boot disk. If this is what you intended then you should not have cloned the 500GB disk but simply installed the 2TB disk and partitioned it to use for additional storage. Since the 2TB disk is a clone of your previous boot disk you should be able to remove the 500GB disk and change the boot priority in the BIOS to boot from the 2TB disk.

If you wish to increase the 500GB partition on the 2TB disk, you can use Disk Management to extend the 500GB partition into the unallocated space. You can only extend a partition into unallocated space if the space is immediately adjacent to the partition you wish to extend. Since you have created a simple volume in the unallocated space you can reverse what you did by deleting that volume and once it is unallocated you can extend your second partition into the unallocated space.

You don't get to pick and choose.

The 500 should be removed and the 2tb put on port 0 as the bootable drive.

There is an MST and Recovery and OS and when you have more than 1 drive the letters alternate between the 2 physical drives.

Warning   For typical configurations, you cannot change data partition onto 2nd drive. There are two main reasons:

• The partition may not automatically protect data that is stored outside the user profile folders. For example, a guest user might have access to files in an unprotected data partition.
• If you change the default location of the user profile folders to any volume other than the system volume, you cannot service your image. The computer may not apply updates, fixes, or service packs to the installation.

@Vic384wrote:-

"If you wish to increase the 500GB partition on the 2TB disk, you can use Disk Management to extend the 500GB partition into the unallocated space. You can only extend a partition into unallocated space if the space is immediately adjacent to the partition you wish to extend. Since you have created a simple volume in the unallocated space you can reverse what you did by deleting that volume and once it is unallocated you can extend your second partition into the unallocated space."

Unfortunately, on my XPS8300, the "Active" Partition (i.e. the Partition with the Operating System on it) was the "middle" Partition &, hence, could not be simply extended!

The O.P. needed to sort out the Partition sizes as part of the Cloning Exercise. In fact, I discover a You-Tube Video showing precisely this! As far as I recall (since in my case I was reducing the size of the partition, I didn't need to implement it), it basically it involved un-ticking the Tick-Box for the Top Partition (effecting confirming that you DON'T want it to be cloned) then adjusting the size of the OS Partition (since there is nothing above it), but leaving adequate space for the 3rd Partition - then re-ticking the Tick-Box of the 3rd Partition (to confirm cloning is required).

@John-Jay wrote: "Unfortunately, on my XPS8300, the "Active" Partition (i.e. the Partition with the Operating System on it) was the "middle" Partition &, hence, could not be simply extended!"

This is true in your case, but it appears that the OP cloned the old disk to a new larger disk but is still booting from the old disk. It appears that the cloned C: partition is now the J: partition on the new disk.

Hi, @Vic384 ,

Yes, you are correct - however, I felt there were 2 issues (albeit the OP was mixing them up) & I was simply covering the specific issue of him cloning to a larger Disk!

I have to be honest & say that I'm uncomfortable with a Cloning Procedure that requires both HDDs (or SSDs) to be inside the XPS at the same time - it all becomes too risky!

I've always attached the new Disk to a USB Adapter (which is NOT bootable) & then cloned it (this is how I carried out the Procedure on my XPS 8300). After Cloning, shutdown PC & then physically swap them over - that way the PC cannot be confused about which is the actual Bootable Drive!

After that, I would connect the Old Drive (via the USB Adapter), double-checking that I had already copied any important Data over, then totally re-partition & Format it as a new Drive.

I thought I would clear some things up, so I started up the computer.  I did change to boot to the new HDD because it was taking sometimes 5 minutes to boot from the old disc.  But now things have changed on the computer.  It seems that I have created a mess. I am planning on getting rid of the old HDD and replace it with a SSD in about a month.

When I open disk management, I get this

Disc 0 (this is the new HDD)  100mb ntfs healthy(s)--(C) 462 gb  healthy--55.3mb Healthy recovery--new volume (G) 1.36 TB free of 1.36 TB The free space (Volume G) is no longer next to the (C)  If I change the boot order back to the old disc will that solve this problem?

Disc 1 (this is the old HDD)  I have three partitions like the first three above except now the drive is (H)

When I click on "This PC"  I now have drive C, Drive E (which says that it is system reserved) Drive F (which says that it is System Reserve), New volume G, and local disk H.    

This was the first time that I have cloned a hard drive so I just let the program pick the options which I will know better next time.  

Thanks

@wayneout423 wrote: "If I change the boot order back to the old disc will that solve this problem?" No, changing the boot order does not change the partitions on the disk, only the letters assigned to the partitions. You probably did not notice the 53.6MB Healthy Recovery partition before, but that is why your new volume G: is not next to C:. To expand the C: partition into unallocated space there cannot be a partition between it and the unallocated space.

I am not sure why drive letters are assigned to the system reserve partitions, that is not normally done.