Moving to a new SSD

[pmcabinet]

Mario quite rightly suggests moving to a fast SSD for the best database performance - so I have installed a new 2TB SSD in my W10 desktop PC, in addition to the existing 2TB HDD which constitutes my D: drive (backups are on external HHDs). The OS C: drive is on a rather small but adequate 250GB SSD.

I initialised the new SSD in disk management then used a Macrium image to clone the old D: drive to the new SSD; Windows assigned the drive letter E: to this disk.

In my naive manner, I thought I could just swap drive letters to make my new E: drive become the new D: drive. Not so, of course; iMatch and other software that stores data files on the D: drive failed to communicate - 'Open in Windows Explorer' for instance was greyed out when right-clicking a thumbnail.

So I returned the drives to their original letters and instead directed Windows to save new files to the new E: drive, pending a future relocation of the iMatch database. What surprised me was that Windows completely ignored the instruction and new files continued to be written to the old D: drive.

So I'm thinking: I now have an expensive SSD which is not much more than an ornament to my PC. And I can't figure out where I have gone wrong; Macrium made it all sound so simple!

Should I reformat the new disk, forget about cloning and just move things as per the link I found in an old post: <https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?msg=33021>? Or should I have removed (or reformatted) the old HDD before cloning?

I want to leave the old HDD installed for archiving. I'm particularly keen to get this SSD up and running since I've just splashed out on iMatch 2025 (very reasonable discount by the way!).

In short, how do I get iMatch's db onto a new SSD functioning as my D: drive?

[Mario]

This has nothing to do with IMatch. I would double check in Windows Disk Management that your D: and E: disks are mounted with the drive letters you think there are.
Maybe you must first unmount the old disk, reboot, then mount the new SSD as D: and then the old one as E:

IMatch uses the file system drive letters as assigned.
When you replace a D: disk with another D: disk, IMatch will flag the disk as offline, since the drive media serial number has changed. Use the Relocate command on the disk level once you have sorted out the E:<=>D: swithcerydoo.

See Off-line Folders and Files for more information about Relocate if you have not used it before.

[pmcabinet]

I've read through the Relocate topic and thank you for pointing that out. But one final question: If, having removed the old HDD temporarily, I change the default drive letter of the new SSD to 'D:' then iMatch will be relocating the database data from D:\Users\etc to D:\Users\etc.

Will that confuse iMatch?

By the way, the new 'peek' view is really good!

[Mario]

then iMatch will be relocating the database data from D:\Users\etc to D:\Users\etc.

 If you swap media while keeping the same drive letter, you still have to relocate. Relocate D: to D: so IMatch picks up the new drive serial number and brings the files back online.