How to determine the m.2 ssd nvme card drive letter?

[bruucee]

I have three nvme drives. I want to erase and reinstall windows on another computer with one of these nvme cards. I need to figure out which card is matched to a particular drive letter.
SO I don't mistakenly delete my c drive. All three are samsung 970 evo m.2 cards at 500gb.

[Omega]

In the Windows installer you can identify the drives by how they are partitioned. The drive containing Windows will have one or more smaller partitions next to a large one.

[plat]

Open Start menu and type in: disk management

[bruucee]

So when opening disk management. I see one C Drive. And two New Volumes for Drive A & Drive F. Still can't figure out which is which. On my mother board. It only says {M2A_32g} M2P & M2A next to the m.2 slots.

[plat]

Open File Explorer and right-click on one of the drives you want info on. Then, in the little context menu, click "Properties" at the bottom.

The various tabs at the top will give you more specific info on each. Try the Hardware tab.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

You can know which device is which drive letter via device manager.

Are the two extra ssds the same model/size?

[bruucee]

Bad 💀 Motha původně napsal:

You can know which device is which drive letter via device manager.

Are the two extra ssds the same model/size?

Yes they are all the same model and size.

[bruucee]

Under Hardware it says Location Bus 0--Target0. For each drive.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Ok so if same model and size then just physically remove one. Use in the other machine.

Are you wanting to clone current C Drive to them?

[Illusion of Progress]

My four drives are listed as bus 0 through 3, but I'm using SATA so I'm guessing M2 shows them different.

Are you sure you have three drives and not one partitioned as many?

What about removing the drive you want to remove to put in the other PC, and then starting it to see which drive letter disappears? Then put it back, clear it, and you're set.

Personally, I think it's always a good idea to have a firm grasp on where everything is on your system (such as on what drive). I wouldn't be able to function without knowing that, haha. It's important for managing your setup, backing up, or like in your current case, wanting to alter your setup, etc.

[bruucee]

I was hoping to avoid having to remove my hardrives off the motherboard. But I guess process of elimination is the only option. Very strange. You would think there would be a feature to identify the drives in Windows. Or some other program.

[Crashed]

Windows Setup will assign letter C to the volume assigned to be the OS volume. The rest of the volumes will be assigned letters presumably in tne order they are detected, but can be reassiged after Setup using Disk Management.

[tiger305]

so 3 identical m.2 drives,
all 3 have windows on them ?
what did you do, have one , then added the others later or
did the pc come with all 3 installed ?
are you using raid ?

[Overseer]

You are are looking at the right place but the wrong tab. You have to look for the Volumes and press a button to load the volume data, which requires admin rights.
Like my 1 TB SATA SSD is Disk 0 and has the drive letter D assigned to it.

[plat]

Wow, I don't know that Windows is capable of pin-pointing the exact physical location of drive letter E for example. Only by inference.

For example, if you open Device Manager/Control Panel, you can find the root ports by first clicking on View (Device by Connection) and then expanding the Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System and finding the root ports which then would correspond to some location on your board. But since there are so many boards and variations, Windows can'tget down to minute detail.

I checked also Crystal Disk Info and various DISKPART parameters--nothing specific as to physical location. However, CDI did provide the serial number so that may be a good idea to note for future reference. Looking in UEFI didn't help either but you may have a different board that is more specific. I found my drive info in the Advanced section but be careful not to make any changes or discard any changes prior to exiting.

I think it's prob. easier to open the machine and remove some nvm-e and then see what happens.