Does Windows 10 track drives across SATA ports?

[i486]

Hey folks, sorry for the possibly dumb question, I'm planning on installing another SATA SSD on my ancient motherboard, but I am running out of ports so I'll have to move one of my hard drives to SATA2. I was wondering if Windows has a way of tracking disks other than the physical port they're plugged into. For example, on Linux I have my /etc/fstab file set up to use UUIDs instead of just identifying each disk as "/dev/sda, /dev/sdb" etc which is dependent on the port they're plugged into. In other words, will Windows "remember" the drive if I move it to a different port?

 

[eidairaman1]

Hey folks, sorry for the possibly dumb question, I'm planning on installing another SATA SSD on my ancient motherboard, but I am running out of ports so I'll have to move one of my hard drives to SATA2. I was wondering if Windows has a way of tracking disks other than the physical port they're plugged into. For example, on Linux I have my /etc/fstab file set up to use UUIDs instead of just identifying each disk as "/dev/sda, /dev/sdb" etc which is dependent on the port they're plugged into. In other words, will Windows "remember" the drive if I move it to a different port?

Ok so you are not moving the windows drive to another physical port. If the other drive has an active partition on it yes it will detect it, just make sure to leave other drives unattached so you keep the letters, once windows detects the drive on the port you should be able to plug in others

 

[i486]

Ok so you are not moving the windows drive to another physical port. If the other drive has an active partition on it yes it will detect it, just make sure to leave other drives unattached so you keep the letters, once windows detects the drive on the port you should be able to plug in others

Nah, my boot drive is staying in the same port. From what I understand, you are suggesting that I first move the old hard drive w/o plugging in the new one, boot into Windows, and then plug in the SSD?

 

[bug]

I'm not sure what exactly do you mean by "tracking". Windows will see your drive, but it's possible it assigns the drive a different letter. If that happens and you need the drive to keep its old letter assignment, you can just go to "Computer Management->Storage->Disk Management" and manually change drive letters there. Changes will stick.

 

[i486]

I'm not sure what exactly do you mean by "tracking". Windows will see your drive, but it's possible it assigns the drive a different letter. If that happens and you need the drive to keep its old letter assignment, you can just go to "Computer Management->Storage->Disk Management" and manually change drive letters there. Changes will stick.

By "tracking", I mean the drive retaining its drive letter, yes.

 

[Kapone33]

By "tracking", I mean the drive retaining it's drive letter, yes.

Sometimes BIOS updates can cause problems(RAID only) but Windows is so solid it will also remember what you named the drive and will accept Windows based RAID arrays You may have to re-initalize or (Import foreign disks) in Disk Management though.

 

[Shihab]

Hey folks, sorry for the possibly dumb question, I'm planning on installing another SATA SSD on my ancient motherboard, but I am running out of ports so I'll have to move one of my hard drives to SATA2. I was wondering if Windows has a way of tracking disks other than the physical port they're plugged into. For example, on Linux I have my /etc/fstab file set up to use UUIDs instead of just identifying each disk as "/dev/sda, /dev/sdb" etc which is dependent on the port they're plugged into. In other words, will Windows "remember" the drive if I move it to a different port?

Yes. Windows assigns a GUID (MS's UUID) to each added volume (tied to on the volume's internal ID) and stores it and the assigned letter in the registery. It should (and in my case, often does) survive port switching, although I think conflict can bungle things up. Remember: Windows will reassign the lowest unmounted letter to any newly added (i.e. doesn't have a registery entry) volume.

Just switch your ports and manually reassign letters if anything breaks. Worst that would happen is some application nagging it can't find some data or writing to the wrong partition.

 

[i486]

Alright guys, thank you all for your replies! I will try this in a few weeks' time and report if anything happens to break, although it seems unlikely.

 

[bug]

Alright guys, thank you all for your replies! I will try this in a few weeks' time and report if anything happens to break, although it seems unlikely.

Neah, unless you cause a static discharge or plug the power connector in the wrong port, you can't really cause any damage.
You do get bonus points for asking first when you're not sure

 

[i486]

For anyone who is wondering, I just got around to installing the drive and everything went smoothly, Windows retained the drive letter and label for the drive that changed ports. Linux should be fine too if you use persistent block device naming.

I did get super OCD about the power plugs on my GPU though, and I don't even have a 4090