Boot disc question

[DryToaster]

What's good. I had an old account here but I couldn't find it yet so... Here we are. Basically, I've got a new build that I've already blown through most of the storage for. I got a 480gb (sata) ssd and it's getting to be insufficient, and I'm going to have some projects of my own that I'm sure are gonna take up some space. Basically, my question is if I get an nvme ssd and copy all the data from my first one, and subsequently wipe the first drive, will the nvme drive be bootable if I set it to be the boot drive?

Thanks

[Master Disaster]

6 minutes ago, BlueScope819 said:

Yes, that's how you do it. You could also just buy a 2tb HDD

No, just no. That's not how you do it and would in fact fail on multiple levels.

 

13 minutes ago, DryToaster said:

What's good. I had an old account here but I couldn't find it yet so... Here we are. Basically, I've got a new build that I've already blown through most of the storage for. I got a 480gb (sata) ssd and it's getting to be insufficient, and I'm going to have some projects of my own that I'm sure are gonna take up some space. Basically, my question is if I get an nvme ssd and copy all the data from my first one, and subsequently wipe the first drive, will the nvme drive be bootable if I set it to be the boot drive?

Thanks

You will need to clone the old drive onto the new drive in order for it to be fully transferred and bootable. Install Macrium Reflect then use it to create a Bootable Recovery USB. Boot from the USB, click Backup then click on the source drive and click clone, in the next Window select the new destination drive and click finish (just click OK to any warnings) then wait for it to finish. Once its finished swap the boot order over in BIOS and you will be good.

 

DO NOT try to copy/paste everything. For a start you couldn't even if you tried since Windows has permissions to prevent important files from being accessed by anyone except the OS but even if you could (say you booted from Linux and copy/pasted everything) it still would not copy the boot information over so the drive would not boot.

[DryToaster]

7 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

-snippe-

Thank you! Two questions:

Does this also keep the program file data and settings that I have?

How massive of a USB drive would I need to do this? I've got my steam lib downloaded, not that I couldn't just do it again...

[Master Disaster]

6 hours ago, DryToaster said:

Thank you! Two questions:

Does this also keep the program file data and settings that I have?

How massive of a USB drive would I need to do this? I've got my steam lib downloaded, not that I couldn't just do it again...

Cloning creates a 1:1 back up of the entire drive, the new drive will be identical to the old one.

 

4GB (or bigger) is fine for the USB. The USB drive is only used to store Reflect, since you cannot clone a Windows drive while Windows is running its necessary to create a USB version of the software and boot from that. The transfer of data is done direct from one drive to another.