How to match physical internal hard drive to drive letter?

[Mary K]

I have two 2-TB data drives in my Windows 7 PC, one with only RAW files, and one with edited files to print.  I would like to replace drive E, which contains the RAW files, with a 3-TB drive.  However I cannot figure out which of the three physical drives is drive E.  I know the serial numbers and manufacturer or each drive if that is of any help.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Mary

[degrub]

Windows or Mac ? i should read closer. Generally windows will assign in the order it sees for the sata connector port 0,1,2,3...etc being C,D,E,...

There are a couple ways to do this move.

1) First clone the drive to the new one.
When you open the PC to disconnect the drive, look on the label to match the serial # and unplug the sata cable. You may have to physically remove the drive to see the label. Go into properties for the new drive, and set the drive letter to E: and make sure everything works as it should.  Once that is done, then unplug the new drive , plug in the old 2TB drive and set the drive letter to a different letter. Plug in the 3TB drive. Then you can  use ithe 2 TB drive however you want.

2) install the new drive and move the files over. You will have to reconnect the database if using LR. There are plenty of posts here on how to do that.

[PeterAit]

Open the computer so you can get your hand on the disks. Do a chkdsk of E:. You should find that one of your physical disks is vibrating while the others are not, or are vibrating less so (they are rotating but the head is not moving).

[Mary K]

Someone from NatureScapes posted a solution that works:

Right mouse click on the desktop or start menu "Computer" icon and select Manage from the drop down menu.

This should open Computer Management

In the left hand pane under Storage you have "Disk Management" - normal click on that which loads up your computer disk configuration in the central pane.

In the top central pane (white background), normal click once on the disk you want to identify (in your case E:), this should highlight the same disk in the lower central pane (grey background) with cross hatchings (or just cross reference and match the volume labels and drive letters between the 2 panes)

Once you've identified Disk "E:" in the lower pane, right mouse click on the "Disk 'number' " icon on the grey part of the display for that disk and select Properties from the drop down menu. On the general tab of Disk Properties is the drive model number (it may also indicate manufacturer as well). Clicking on the Volumes tab will double check you have the correct drive by identifying it's volume name and currently allocated drive letter.

Thanks to all for their response,
Mary