M.2 scew up

[Alastair200]

So I think I screwed up. Building a new machine and got a Samsung evo 970 nvme m.2 ssd. The plan was to clone my mechanic hdd transferring windows etc. But my old pc motherboard doesn’t have an m.2 slot. So how am I meant to clone it? From what I understand I can’t just put the old hard drive in the new machine and then clone it. I don’t know why I didn’t think this through. If anyone can help that would be great. 

[hconverse02]

You can get a pci-e to m.2 adapter if you want for like $20 or less.  Imo saving the most important files then making a new windows drive is much much easier and leads to fewer problems than cloning a drive because of driver issues file corruption and other things

[Alastair200]

Hey thanks for your comment. I had a look online and I can’t find one that supports m.2 nvme just SATA. Also will this not give me the same issue when I move it to the new system ie it won’t boot coz all the drivers will be different. 

 

I was readying that if your windows is linked to your Microsoft digital login after major hardware changes you should be able to recover your activation? I’ve swapped harddrives before with a fresh install and just seemed to log back into windows with my Microsoft login do you think it will work with the whole system? Basically all I care about is my windows activation. 

[aezakmi]

38 minutes ago, Alastair200 said:

I can’t just put the old hard drive in the new machine and then clone it.

Normally you can, except if the disk uses SCSI or a parallel interface

 

though you'll need another computer to create the Clonezilla bootable USB or CD if you're using that to clone, you could try booting from the old drive but since hardware is different you'll most likely get a blue screen since the system wasn't ready for the change (sysprep)

[hconverse02]

3 hours ago, Alastair200 said:

Hey thanks for your comment. I had a look online and I can’t find one that supports m.2 nvme just SATA. Also will this not give me the same issue when I move it to the new system ie it won’t boot coz all the drivers will be different. 

 

I was readying that if your windows is linked to your Microsoft digital login after major hardware changes you should be able to recover your activation? I’ve swapped harddrives before with a fresh install and just seemed to log back into windows with my Microsoft login do you think it will work with the whole system? Basically all I care about is my windows activation. 

Yeah you can usually save a key to an account and it will stay activated when you re-login after you setup. Keep that drive just in case, and I really recommend a fresh install because it's best when youre building a new system that needs new drivers

[Alastair200]

Hi everyone thanks for your help. So here is the plan. New drive in new computer followed by fresh install. Fingers cross through activation goes across then just copy files from old computer across. Plan be if I can’t get the activation across is to have a go with the old drive in new computer and see what happens. I’ll let you know how I get on