I am trying to swap my Boot SSD (m.2) to another without loosing the data.

[ZackCodesAI]

I am trying to swap my laptop's SSD (512 GB) with my Desktop's SSD (120 GB) so that I can have more storage on my Desktop's boot drive. But I don't want to install all the desktop applications again. (Loosing all the data from Laptop's SSD is fine with me) 

Now it could have been easy if either of my machines had 2 M.2 slots, but they don't :(

 

What can I do? Can I just recreate partitions manually and copy data using an external drive?

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, ZackCodesAI said:

I am trying to swap my laptop's SSD (512 GB) with my Desktop's SSD (120 GB) so that I can have more storage on my Desktop's boot drive. But I don't want to install all the desktop applications again. (Loosing all the data from Laptop's SSD is fine with me) 

Now it could have been easy if either of my machines had 2 M.2 slots, but they don't

 

What can I do? Can I just recreate partitions manually and copy data using an external drive?

https://www.ubackup.com/free-backup-software.html

 

It will clone from one to the other without issue, just be careful when you choose what drive to clone TO and FROM.

[Electronics Wizardy]

HOw much space are you using on the laptop now? Your probably gonna have the shrink the partition first.

 

You can clone to a image on a hdd, then swap drives, then clone from that image.

[ZackCodesAI]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

https://www.ubackup.com/free-backup-software.html

 

It will clone from one to the other without issue, just be careful when you choose what drive to clone TO and FROM.

I know, but I have no way to connect both the drives to a single machine!

[Radium_Angel]

Just now, ZackCodesAI said:

I know, but I have no way to connect both the drives to a single machine!

Your desktop only has 1 SATA port???

[ZackCodesAI]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

HOw much space are you using on the laptop now? Your probably gonna have the shrink the partition first.

 

You can clone to a image on a hdd, then swap drives, then clone from that image.

That sound good. I have an empty 3.5' HDD on the Desktop, I can use it to clone the Desktop Boot-drive, then put it on my laptop and clone the SSD back! 

Will have to create an external boot drive to hold windows though

IDK how I can handle that as well. Is there any tool to clone drives on Linux, so that I can install an Ubuntu instance on a pen drive.

[ZackCodesAI]

3 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Your desktop only has 1 SATA port???

I got 2 M.2 SSDs to deal with and no M.2 -> SATA converter

[Radium_Angel]

Just now, ZackCodesAI said:

I got 2 M.2 SSDs to deal with and no M.2 -> SATA converter

Ah, m.2, get yourself a PCIe m.2 adapter, they are super cheap on newegg/amazon/ebay, and use that for cloning purposes.

Or, clone to a sata SSD, then swap m.2 device and clone back from sata SSD

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, ZackCodesAI said:

That sound good. I have an empty 3.5' HDD on the Desktop, I can use it to clone the Desktop Boot-drive, then put it on my laptop and clone the SSD back! 

Will have to create an external boot drive to hold windows though

IDK how I can handle that as well. Is there any tool to clone drives on Linux, so that I can install an Ubuntu instance on a pen drive.

I normally do my cloning with DD on linux, works well, failry easy to use, and easily makes hdd images on network shares or external hdds

 

[Archer42]

I tend to use clonezilla for things like this.

You will have to shrink partition on larger drive so that it fits to smaller one before doing that, you can do it in windows disk management.

Then just write the .iso to usb flash drive and boot from it.

Make a backup of both drives to your hdd (you do not have to, but it is the safest way in case you mess something up), then just restore both backups to appropriate drives.

When restoring backup from larger drive to smaller one you will have to make software skip checking target drive size on restore in advanced options, otherwise it will fail.