I have 3 disks in my desktop PC (Z77 Intel Ivy Bridge chipset with 2x SATA 6gb/s, 2x 3gb/s ports). Current disk / drive letter mapping:
Drive C: | SSD Intel 530 Series | Main Windows 8 drive
Drive D: | HDD Western Digital 1TB | User accounts
Drive E: | SSD Intel 520 Series | Windows swap file
C: and D: are on 6gb/s SATA ports, while E: is on a 3gb/s SATA port.
I am aware that 3 and 6gb/s transfer speeds are not realistic anyway and more of symbolic nature, but using the "Atto" SSD benchmarking tool I could see that drive E: actually only runs at half speed (~250 GB/s instead of 500 GB/s), which is why I'd like to swap SATA ports.
The boot order would not need to be changed as drive C: and the corresponding port would not change.
However, I am concerned that after swapping the SATA ports on the mobo between D: and E: they might be confused by Windows (e.g., Windows looking for user account data on the Intel 520 SSD instead of the Western Digital hard disk).
If I am right, how can I possibly re-map the drive letters before booting up Windows (and risking to corrupt it)?
Best Answer
It's fine. You won't corrupt anything. Worst case scenario you swap the ports back the way they were.