Cloning M.2 Drive on Laptop?

[CarterBeals]

I am looking at purchasing a new laptop fairly soon - the new Dell XPS 15 looks mighty enticing. However, I had a couple questions before I commit to making a purchase. 

 

Due to my employment, I have the ability to purchase Samsung 9XX Series NVME SSDs at a slightly discounted price. My intention was to buy the model of laptop with the screen resolution and processor that I desired, and then upgrade the RAM and SSD manually. The Dell information page for the New XPS 15 lists its current SSD configuration as a "PCIE SSD," which as far as I can tell, indicates that the laptop would be capable of taking advantage of the increased speeds offered by Samsung Pros. 

 

The only hitch in my plan is that, to my knowledge, the XPS 15 only has one M.2 storage slot. Upon receiving the laptop, I was intending to reset Windows to remove any factory bloatware, and then promptly migrate it over to the new drive. However, I do not know the best way to go about cloning an M.2 drive. I've used external cloning devices to clone HDDs before, but I have not heard of such a thing for SSDs, much less those in an M.2 form factor. Even if said tool did exist, I don't really want to spend money on something I'd likely only use once. 

 

This leads me to my question - what is the best way to transfer the information from one M.2 SSD to another? Is it even possible? I would suspect there might be a way to do it by using an external HDD or a USB drive as an intermediary, but I do not know enough about this subject to be certain.

 

Additionally, would the Windows license transfer over from one drive to another? I would hate to install the new drive only to find out that my copy of Windows was no longer activated. 

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  

[Enderman]

Do not clone drives, it is bad for the OS.

If you're resetting windows why would you even want to waste more time cloning?

Just removed the old drive, insert the new one, and install windows from a USB.

It will take the same amount of time as resetting and you don't need to waste time cloning which is bad anyway.

[wayland64]

This might be your best bet 

https://www.amazon.com/ZTC-Enclosure-Adapter-SuperSpeed-ZTC-EN004-BK/dp/B00KQ4LNJC

[CarterBeals]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Do not clone drives, it is bad for the OS.

If you're resetting windows why would you even want to waste more time cloning?

Just removed the old drive, insert the new one, and install windows from a USB.

It will take the same amount of time as resetting and you don't need to waste time cloning which is bad anyway.

How would I go about installing Windows from a USB? Would the Windows activation carry over? 

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, CarterBeals said:

How would I go about installing Windows from a USB? Would the Windows activation carry over? 

Yes it would because you are not changing the motherboard.

http://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

You would just replace the drive before you start installing.

[CarterBeals]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Yes it would because you are not changing the motherboard.

http://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

You would just replace the drive before you start installing.

This guide looks like it has all the information I needed. Thanks for the help.