Should I clone my HDD?
 

Need a quick answer to this. Had a slow boot issue awhile ago when my 2.5TB HDD was hooked up via SATA but fine if externally docked via USB 3.0. Recently obtained a free 640GB WD drive and hooked it up via SATA, computer booted up fine, unlike the 2.5TB, which reaffirms my assumption that the larger drive is somehow corrupted but otherwise functioning fine, just causing a slow boot.

Should I mirror and format the 2.5TB drive (with only about 70GB of data) onto the 640GB drive and then mirror the 640GB back to the 2.5TB? I'm unsure if whether this would potentially "transfer" over the corruption (if it's some kind of file corruption on the 2.5TB), or should I just backup what I can (copypasta) onto the 640GB and completely format the 2.5TB?

tl;dr - is it safe to mirror then format the drive with potentially corrupted boot files (only causing slow boot but otherwise functions completely fine) onto the smaller drive, and then mirror it back to the formatted drive? Neither of these are my OS drives, my OS is on an SSD.

Can you not just transfer important data, which isnt that much (70GB of data), to the new drive then format/reinstall on the old drive? Probably the best way to go about this if you have the time.

Man, doing a full non-quick format is so time consuming, but necessary as I'm not sure what is exactly corrupted in my 2.5TB...

+1 to TOS'd. Don't skimp out. If you're gonna do it, do it right the first time to save yourself a butt load of problems and headaches. Easier to just transfer data that you really want to keep, do full format, and the transfer back or copy back. If the 2.5TB is still messed up, at least you already have the data on the 640 and ready to roll. With 2.5TB on a full format, I would just leave it over night.

Full format done. 2.5TB is now fixed and PC boots up within 15 seconds! Just finished transferring all data from the 640GB back to the 2.5TB

Now my question is, my 2.5TB is now somehow G drive and my 640GB is D drive. How would I swap the two letters around? Just reassign them one by one or is there an easier way to just swap the two of them?

It's funny because I realized the cause of my troubles with the 2.5TB may be because it somehow got converted to MBR when it needed to be GPT, causing boot problems :derp:

just manaully reassign the drive letters in disk management

All is done. Finally fixed my boot hang :thumbs: