Correct procedure to clone.replace,reformat

[Budman1]

Hello! After looking everywhere for the answer, I do not believe it is out there. I have 4 drives 0,1,2,3 (C:,D:,E:,F C: and E: drives are 1 TB each, UEFI GPT mounted in a 4 port dasd backplane with SATA cables running behind the board, hard to swap.. I used CloneZilla to clone, what I believe was a successful clone. Windows reported drive E: was offline due to having a UniqueID collision. (I assumed this was correct for an exact copy of c: drive.)

My c: drive has been making a strange noise when it boots up and shuts down, so I thought I would swap the drives. Unfortunately, Windows did not put E: drive (Old C: drive) offline but it did recognize both as online. GRRRRR! It was then impossible to boot even after swapping back and trying, and then trying each without the other mounted. The length of time and gyrations it took to get the Unique ID changed and E: drive again 'cleaned' through DISKPART, was horrendous.

Long winded I know but my question is how do I:
1. Clone C: to E:
2. Move E: to SATA C: location
3. Boot up
4. Remount and erase and format the old C: drive, which will just be used for a spare until I purchase a new drive.

There are hundreds of YouTube and help sites that give a step by step explanation of cloning but the information to move the cloned drive to old SATA position 0, removing or changing the newly cloned drives ID AFTER it is mounted in order to format, is missing on all of them. This is what I thought swapping the cloned drive would accomplish but evidently not and I don't wish another catastrophe. If anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciated before my strange noise becomes constant.
Thank You

[Krispy Kritter]

I've not used CloneZilla, so I can't comment on it's function. I've used Macrium Reflect numerous times. Attach the new drive, clone C: to the new drive. Shutdown, remove C and install the new clone and boot. Never had any issues.

[johns0]

The only thing you need to do is either swap the cables so the new drive is using the old drives cables which are still in the same sata port or go into your bios setting and switch the boot drive to your new drive if using a different sata port

[Budman1]

Thank you for your reply but Unfortunately I have a 4 drive bay with no way of knowing which is which. I failed before leaving them both in so they must be on the same sata?(drive 0 and 2) the boot locked up. This time I cloned the c drive to e drive (SSD) with EaseUS because my wife purchased a 500GB SSD for Christmas and was eager to see me use it and my 'C' drive which was 1TB. EaseUS was one that cloned to smaller drive.

After I removed c drive and the system booted from e drive. I then moved e drive ssd to the c position and booted safely. I checked bios and it merely say cd drive, hard drive( any) ,usb. To reduce the risk of botching my system again I attached the original drive to a usb to sata cable and formatted before inserting into drive 2 location again.