Need help on Upgrading to an NVMe SSD for My Laptop

HairyChickens · September 18, 2021

Hi everyone, right now I am planning on upgrading my laptop to an NVMe SSD and there are just a few things I want to ask.

The SSD I want buy is a 500gb Kingston A2000 just waiting for it to go for a bit cheaper. My laptop is an ASUS Zenbook Flip 14 UX461UA which currently has a M.2 SATA SSD. I think the A2000 should work on the ASUS but please correct me if I am wrong.

Regarding the software which will be cloning my current drive, are there any recommendations? Free is best. Macrium Reflect? Acronis True Image (which I think Kingston offers it for free).

Also with connecting the A2000 for cloning is it fine if I use something like this?(aliexpress.com). I have a Dell Inspiron 3670 which has an empty M.2 slot so I am planning to put my current SATA SSD into that motherboard and then use the PCIe adapter thing and connect the A2000 to do the cloning. Im trying to save a buck and I'm willing to wait but just wondering if it would be better if I just bought an M.2 NVMe to USB adapter. Again the Dell should work with the A2000 but please let me know otherwise.

Lastly are there any tips/things I should look out for when doing this upgrade? This is my first time doing this so any advice would be great.

Edit: There's this guy on YouTube(youtu.be) who did an SSD upgrade on my exact laptop and got an INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE BSOD error. I Googled it briefly and its something to do with MBR and GPT partitioning schemes (quite nooby at this stuff so maybe not). I checked my current drive and its GPT. If I were to get this error what would I do without having to install a fresh copy of Windows?

Thanks!

RONOTHAN## · September 18, 2021

Reading online, it doesn't look like the SSD on that laptop is replace-able. Unless you open it up and clearly see an M.2 slot, I'd assume it's soldered.

However, lets assume you do find an m.2 slot and are going to clone the drive. While I don't personally recommend cloning, drives, the one utility that I know will always work is Clonezilla. It runs off a live USB, and it makes a one to one copy of whatever drive is set as the source, and what ever drive is set as the destination. You can also have it make images of the drive that you can later restore to other drives. It's an awesome tool, plus it's free and open source. Much better in my experience than any of the stuff that runs within windows.

That adapter would probably work, but again, there is the free option of just making an image of the drive then later restoring that image, given that you have enough space on that system's hard drive to be able to do it.

HairyChickens · September 20, 2021

On 9/18/2021 at 11:22 PM, RONOTHAN## said:

Reading online, it doesn't look like the SSD on that laptop is replace-able. Unless you open it up and clearly see an M.2 slot, I'd assume it's soldered.

However, lets assume you do find an m.2 slot and are going to clone the drive. While I don't personally recommend cloning, drives, the one utility that I know will always work is Clonezilla. It runs off a live USB, and it makes a one to one copy of whatever drive is set as the source, and what ever drive is set as the destination. You can also have it make images of the drive that you can later restore to other drives. It's an awesome tool, plus it's free and open source. Much better in my experience than any of the stuff that runs within windows.

That adapter would probably work, but again, there is the free option of just making an image of the drive then later restoring that image, given that you have enough space on that system's hard drive to be able to do it.

The SSD is replaceable I've checked myself.