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Migrate SATA III SSD to M.2 NVMe SSD? (Solved)

francisw19

francisw19

Member
Hello, I've picked up a new NVMe M.2 SSD. I use Macrium Reflect to backup my system. I just wanted to confirm - I should be able to back up my SSD, install the new M.2 disk, and then restore my system image to the new drive right? Anything I'm missing?

Thanks in advance! 🙂
 
francisw19 said:
OK sounds good, thanks for the confirmation. 🙂
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Wait! Before you do that -- install the NVMe first, then install the driver for it. There's a native Windows driver that has to be downloaded and installed for Win 7. No problem with Win 10, but hopefully the M.2 will come with one, anyway.

THEN you can clone the SSD to the NVMe, and you're all set. The SSD and OS will be prepared with the driver for the NVMe.

I wouldn't know what would happen if you didn't follow this caution, but it seems like the most prudent path.
 
BonzaiDuck said:
Wait! Before you do that -- install the NVMe first, then install the driver for it. There's a native Windows driver that has to be downloaded and installed for Win 7. No problem with Win 10, but hopefully the M.2 will come with one, anyway.

THEN you can clone the SSD to the NVMe, and you're all set. The SSD and OS will be prepared with the driver for the NVMe.

I wouldn't know what would happen if you didn't follow this caution, but it seems like the most prudent path.
Click to expand...

Oh, hadn't thought of that. Thanks for the reply, appreciate it! 🙂
 
francisw19 said:
Oh, hadn't thought of that. Thanks for the reply, appreciate it! 🙂
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You're welcome.

Also, a good note about Macrium Reflect -- Free, "Home" or "Workstation. It will even clone a dual-boot OS configuration on a single drive, leaving the clone in perfect working order. Neither Acronis nor EaseUS will support or guarantee that result. So you should be all set, regardless..
 
BonzaiDuck said:
You're welcome.

Also, a good note about Macrium Reflect -- Free, "Home" or "Workstation. It will even clone a dual-boot OS configuration on a single drive, leaving the clone in perfect working order. Neither Acronis nor EaseUS will support or guarantee that result. So you should be all set, regardless..
Click to expand...

OK good stuff. The drive should get here today, so I'll give it a go tonight.

Thanks again for the help guys, it's appreciated. 🙂
 
So I just got the new drive installed. I used the clone function in Reflect to copy my system partitions over (in record time no less 😎 ) and all appears to be working great. Thanks guys! 🙂
 
francisw19 said:
So I just got the new drive installed. I used the clone function in Reflect to copy my system partitions over (in record time no less 😎 ) and all appears to be working great. Thanks guys! 🙂
Click to expand...

You're "solved" but I'm curious. I don't remember that Macrium would resize a system-boot partition/volume in the cloning process. That's really not a problem with a single-boot OS: You can even expand the system partition with Disk Management. But in order to resize with Macrium, you had to make a drive image first, and then resize the partition/volume when you restore it. And Maybe I couldn't resize with initial cloning because the drive contained dual-boot OS volumes.
 
BonzaiDuck said:
You're "solved" but I'm curious. I don't remember that Macrium would resize a system-boot partition/volume in the cloning process. That's really not a problem with a single-boot OS: You can even expand the system partition with Disk Management. But in order to resize with Macrium, you had to make a drive image first, and then resize the partition/volume when you restore it. And Maybe I couldn't resize with initial cloning because the drive contained dual-boot OS volumes.
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Yep that's right, I noticed that too during the cloning process - no option to resize. Just going from a 480GB to 512GB so it wasn't an issue...just used the disk management and expanded the partition afterwards. It's just the Windows partition so it wasn't a big deal. The only time I've been able to resize is, as you say, while restoring an image with Reflect.

I can't say how well it would have worked if the new drive was smaller, but at least for me it was a quick and painless process. 🙂
 
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We should start a club of NVMe hotdawgs. There are already plenty of them around -- XabanakFanatik is one. Those things have been around for a couple years. I'd suppose anyone who got a motherboard with an M.2 slot probably took the plunge in one way or the other.

That was my plan, until I studied the mobo printed guide some more and explored the BIOS. It would have to "share" bandwidth with SATA 1 and 2 which is also SATA-Express-1.

So I bought the PCIE x4 adapter.
 
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