New SSD, help required

[Flinty]

Hi everyone. 

 

I recently purchased myself an NVME M.2 to replace my ageing Sata SSD. Currently I have my SSD as my boot drive, but I'm looking to make my M.2 the new boot. I also have two HDDs for the majority of my stuff. I am wondering how would I go about making the m.2 the new boot drive without having to reinstall windows and back up all my crap. Running windows 10 OS

 

Cheers

[Mi26]

Clone the disk over

[Flinty]

So if I clone it over, then unplug my ssd the computer should just boot? That doesn't sound right

 

[Madgemade]

10 minutes ago, Flinty said:

So if I clone it over, then unplug my ssd the computer should just boot? That doesn't sound right

 

Only if you use the right software. Decent paid for software will reconfigure the boot files to recognize your new SSD after doing the clone. If you just do a 'dd' clone in Linux or something like that it will not boot. I know this from experience. If you do a straight clone you need to regenerate the windows boot files with bcdboot/bcdedit from a windows installer/recovery.

 

Best to use some commercial software which specifically lists this a one of it's functions. Usually you will be able to a get a trail version or something like that.

[homeap5]

19 minutes ago, Flinty said:

So if I clone it over, then unplug my ssd the computer should just boot? That doesn't sound right

 

But that is what it works. Use MacriumReflect (I recommend to boot using macrium rescue usb you can create using macrium reflect, so you can clone system that is not in use).

[Flinty]

So let me get this straight, I'll install the new M.2, boot normally, clone my sata ssd to the M.2, power off, unplug my Sata SSD, boot and enter BIOS, select my M.2 as the boot drive and then boot?

 

Should that work?

[Madgemade]

2 minutes ago, Flinty said:

So let me get this straight, I'll install the new M.2, boot normally, clone my sata ssd to the M.2, power off, unplug my Sata SSD, boot and enter BIOS, select my M.2 as the boot drive and then boot?

 

Should that work?

Yes, if you use a tool like MacriumReflect recommended by @homeap5 then yes that's exactly what you would do. Just make sure to use a good tool. MacriumReflect sounds like the way to go.

[Flinty]

Alright, and just to be extra sure, my extra drives with all the gucci stuff on it will live??

[Madgemade]

Yes it will not be touched. If you do have any other drives then I would disconnected them before doing the cloning. Just to be super sure that the wrong one can't be cloned. But there is not need to do that. I just to do it to make it easier to know which drive is what. It can sometimes be confusing if you have multiple drives which are the same size.

[Flinty]

Thanks for the tip, I'll be sure to do that. Thanks again guys