SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 Issue

[mlhm5]

Am wanting to migrate my SSD to Samsung 960 EVO M.2, but in extensive searching, I cannot find an enclosure for M.2 NVMe drives (M key), except this https://goo.gl/m5xz2e and am not paying $100+ just for a one time use to clone my SSD to the M.2. Before you ask the m-key 960 will not work in the b+m slot on the b+m enclosure below.

If I do not buy the 960 and go with the Samsung 850 EVO, no problem because it is B+M key M.2 and there are many enclosures available, some as low as $9. There is a massive difference in performance between the two when you are moving big files around, so I would prefer to use the 960 as my boot disc and another 960 in the second slot - mb supports 2 PCI m.2 (has m-key slots).
Anyone else have this issue and have solved it. Love to hear the answer

 

[Billy Tallis]

Why do you need an enclosure for the 960 EVO? What are you trying to migrate from?

 

[Shmee]

Save an image of your current boot disk to an external drive using an imaging program, such as macrium reflect(free). Make a bootable disc or thumbdrive of the programs recovery suite. Boot from that, and restore from the image to the 960 Evo after it is installed. You will need the 960 Evo installed as well as the USB drive and the external drive with the image attached.

 

[mlhm5]

very grateful, thanks, but am looking for a more permanent option such as a way to hook up the 960 to an external USB and migrate the data that way. No problem with an 850 but that m-key is a real problem on the 960.

 

[mlhm5]

Why do you need an enclosure for the 960 EVO? What are you trying to migrate from?

Do not need an enclosure however the m-key on the 960 prevents any existing cable from hooking up to a usb because there is no equipment available at this time.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

The issue isn't really the M-key. The M-key is a symptom of the design of the drives. An 850 EVO is a SATA Drive. If you look at almost any of those B-key enclosures out there, they'll specify somewhere in the specs that they're SATA Only. Sata -> USB Controllers have been on on the market for a long time. They have a solid decade of development and volume production under the belt. The only thing a SATA M.2 key requires is a different socket.

M-key on the other hand is purely PCI-e designed for NVMe drives like the 960. This is all still newer, and there hasn't yet been solid volume production of devices to work these these newer protocols yet. Part of it is technical hurdles, and part of it is cost. For instance, most consumer NVMe boards have no provision for hot-swapping an NVMe based storage device. So if you had one directly connected to your system and you unplugged it, your system would probably not be very happy. We have hot-swapping NVMe slots in server backplanes, but that's going to take time to trickle down to consumer levels (and prices).

There's a couple ways to deal with it, and more than likely for consumers it's going to come down to leveraging Thunderbolt to extend PCI-e outside the computer and allow you to connect NVMe straight to your system. That however is only going to be common after the majority of motherboards out there can support having the drive unplugged with the system on (can you imagine the ire from your average consumer if you had to power off your system to disconnect or plug a drive in?).

While we're in this transition phase, there is such a thing as external M.2 -> U.2 drive enclosures. U.2 is simply the cable variant of carrying 4x PCI-e lanes, and is used most often for connecting 2.5" NVMe drives to systems. Granted U.2 cables are solidly expensive given their use category, and 2.5" U.2 -> U.2 enclosures also aren't cheap, but it is a semi-permanent choice. You could either plug the U.2 adapter into a PCI-e slot, or use an M.2 -> U.2 adapter. You could do M.2 to U.2 adapter OR PCI-e to U.2 card -> U.2 cable to U.2 Enclosure. Note that this does not get you over any of the existing NVMe hurdles. You still would likely need to shutdown your system any time you needed to plug in or disconnect your drive. But it is an option!

Otherwise, I'd say patience is a virtue. These standards are new, fast, and not 100% nailed down. It's going to take time to see volume products for the same price as a slower standard with years and years of production behind it.

 

[aigomorla]

i am lost in why u need to use a usb to migrate data?

Cant you just use the first SSD, SATA and then connect the 960 in your m.2 port and just run the data migration tool without having to put it in an eclosure?

Or do you not have enough M.2 ports?

You could also just use a pci-e bridge and do the migration that way if you have a free pci-e slot.
Something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-...id=1520196648&sr=8-20&keywords=pci-e+m.2+card

Just remember to put the 960 in the correct slot... and dont be a noob like some of the reviews that puts a pci-e ssd in the sata slot and says its a broken product.

 

[mlhm5]

It is for a Hades Canyon - They have 2 M.2 NVMe slots M-keyed - no SATA, so I have to do it externally. My desktop is shot/dead and I only have a laptop (PC) all the rest are Apple. I have no U.2 connection.

I guess I could boot from an external SSD and then run the software to migrate the OS to the M.2 NVMe drive. Would that work?

There are no external NVME readers at this time, except for the $105 one I found and there is no history on that unit.

 

[aigomorla]

oh that explains a lot then...

So are you trying to go from nvme to nvme?
or M.2 Sata to M.2 NVme?

 

[mlhm5]

My OS is now on a 250GB SATA which is not an M.2 and I want to migrate the OS to a Samsung 960 EVO NVMe M.2

 

[DaveSimmons]

When I needed to recover data off a PCIE M.2 I used a PCI-E x4 card adapter since there were no good USB enclosures. It was $5-10 from Amazon.

 

[UsandThem]

My OS is now on a 250GB SATA which is not an M.2 and I want to migrate the OS to a Samsung 960 EVO NVMe M.2

You can do that by just using Samsung Data Migration by just leaving the SSD where it's at now, and putting in the M.2. drive. I guess I'm not sure why you need some type of external device to clone the OS from the SSD to the new 960 EVO?

 

[DaveSimmons]

You can do that by just using Samsung Data Migration by just leaving the SSD where it's at now, and putting in the M.2. drive. I guess I'm not sure why you need some type of external device to clone the OS from the SSD to the new 960 EVO?

Good point. Install, make sure the M2 is not first in the boot order, use Samsung Data Migration, make it first in the boot order.

You might need to move the SATA ports for some of your devices because of the sharing between M.2 slots and SATA ports.

 

[mlhm5]

You can do that by just using Samsung Data Migration by just leaving the SSD where it's at now, and putting in the M.2. drive. I guess I'm not sure why you need some type of external device to clone the OS from the SSD to the new 960 EVO?

My OS resides on a non-Samsung, non-M.2 SSD in my laptop. My desktop died and I had a backup SSD with the current OS. The Hades Canyon has two M-keyed, M.2 NVMe slots. No place for an internal 2.5" SSD.

Can I take my OS which is on a 2.5"non-M.2 SSD and hook it up as an external drive and boot from that drive and then migrate the OS to the NVMe M.2 drive?

 

[Shmee]

No. WIndows wont boot from USB. Like I said, you need to make an image, save to a USB HDD, and restore from the image using bootable media onto the m.2 once installed.

 

[DaveSimmons]

It sounds like you're trying to migrate the OS from an old PC to a new one with different hardware. It might be better to just do a fresh install.

 

[UsandThem]

My OS resides on a non-Samsung, non-M.2 SSD in my laptop. My desktop died and I had a backup SSD with the current OS. The Hades Canyon has two M-keyed, M.2 NVMe slots. No place for an internal 2.5" SSD.

Can I take my OS which is on a 2.5"non-M.2 SSD and hook it up as an external drive and boot from that drive and then migrate the OS to the NVMe M.2 drive?

No. WIndows wont boot from USB. Like I said, you need to make an image, save to a USB HDD, and restore from the image using bootable media onto the m.2 once installed.

It sounds like you're trying to migrate the OS from an old PC to a new one with different hardware. It might be better to just do a fresh install.

This thread is a little unclear, so let's try to simplify things. Is this what you want to do:

Take SSD from laptop, install it in PC, and then clone it to the 960 EVO, and then remove the SSD after this is done to put back in the laptop?

If so, you would just be better off just doing a clean install to the 960 EVO in the desktop. I guess I am a little unclear what your end-goal is.

 

[XavierMace]

It sounds like you're trying to migrate the OS from an old PC to a new one with different hardware. It might be better to just do a fresh install.

THIS. You're just asking for trouble trying to clone a drive from a completely different computer to your new one.

 

[mlhm5]

OK clean install or image. See which one works out best for me.

 

[XavierMace]

You're going from a SATA drive to a PCIe drive. Even if it "works" (which isn't terribly likely as you're likely going to be missing the NVMe driver), it's going to be suboptimal. Just do a clean install and be done with it.