M.2 PCIe NVMe Adapter - Help

[Vatruvius]

Not entirely sure where I should post this. This is my first time coming to this forum and is my last attempt at finding a solution to this particular problem I am having.

 

I recently bought a laptop with a 256GB NVMe SSD. I purposely chose the 256GB SSD because the money I would save was equal to the cost of a Samsung 970 EVO 1TB SSD. The problem I am having is cloning over my OS and the entire 256GB SSD over to my new 1TB SSD. My laptop only has one NVMe port so it seemed logical to me that I could find a PCIe (2280 compatible) adapter for my 1TB SSD to a USB Type A or C. Unfortunately, it seems not a single PCIe adapter exists, or one that is reasonably priced that is. From the hours of research I have done and the stores I have called the only one I could find was on Newegg and that was an external PCIe enclosure with about half of its reviewers getting their SSD fried.

 

I am not sure if I am alone here but if anyone knows of a M.2 NVMe PCIe (2280 compatible) adapter to USB Type A or C I would greatly appreciate a link or some suggestions. At this point the only real way to clone over my 256GB SSD is to buy an external SSD or swap the drives and redownload everything; Windows, Drivers, etc. on my terrible DSL connection.

 

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

~ Vatruvius

[AT0MAC]

dont know what your budget it, but why not just buy a USB stick or usual external HDD and clone the 256 to that, then install the 1 TB and clone it back into the machine. Extra benefit is you then also have a nice USB for random things on the go or a larger external drive for lets say backups.

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4YU78E7702

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA12K6RN6951

 

 

[Vatruvius]

Right, forgot to mention that part. I already have a 256GB USB. It is actually from Samsung just like the 1TB SSD because Samsung offers its own software for cloning an OS and an entire drive to one of their SSDs. However, this program does not recognize this Samsung USB as an SSD thus I cannot use this software to clone the drive to the USB. When I was doing the research for cloning software I got overwhelmed very quickly and did not know which software to trust. That is why I stuck with the Samsung software because they are the very company that manufactured the SSDs I am using. If you know of a highly recommended cloning software I will gladly give it a look.

[AT0MAC]

7 minutes ago, Vatruvius said:

Right, forgot to mention that part. I already have a 256GB USB. It is actually from Samsung just like the 1TB SSD because Samsung offers its own software for cloning an OS and an entire drive to one of their SSDs. However, this program does not recognize this Samsung USB as an SSD thus I cannot use this software to clone the drive to the USB. When I was doing the research for cloning software I got overwhelmed very quickly and did not know which software to trust. That is why I stuck with the Samsung software because they are the very company that manufactured the SSDs I am using. If you know of a highly recommended cloning software I will gladly give it a look.

I usually use https://clonezilla.org/

 

It looks horrible, but thats because its based on very low level linux code and runs in a system similar to DOS, but that also means it runs on any machine and I have yet to experience it make any trouble. its quite easy to use as it kind of guides you trough step for step as long as you read along what it is asking you to do.

 

best of all, its free and it receives frequent updates to support all types of strange drives

[Vatruvius]

It appears to me that Clonzilla creates a .zip file with the clone in it. Can you clone your OS is a USB and have that USB be your boot drive? This is essentially what I have to do with this laptop. I have to clone the drive to the USB, then boot from the USB, then clone from the USB to the now swapped SSD.

[AT0MAC]

why cant you have both the clonedrive and a usb with clonezilla on it plugged in at the same time? dongle issues?

[AT0MAC]

my laptop have one usb c and a usb 2.0, a weird combination, but i use the usb 2.0 with clonezilla and the usb c with a dongle and a 3.0 drive for when I make backups of my laptop. works like a charm

[Vatruvius]

Alright, after spending the last few hours watching videos and multiple attempts to set up my USB, I now have my new 1TB SSD in my laptop with the old 256GB SSD cloned over. The only problem I am having now is getting windows to add the unallocated 693GB of space to the existing C: drive that was cloned over. Windows recognized the unallocated space, but just won't let me extend the C: drive. I can shrink the C: drive and add what space I shrank back to it but it won't let me add the 693GB of unallocated space. Any suggestions?

 

* Upon doing some research the problem appears to be that the unallocated space is separated from the C: (Boot Partition) by another partition so the partitions are not adjacent. The partition order is as follows: Healthy (Recovery Partition), Healthy (EFI System Partition), C: (Boot Partition), Healthy (Recovery Partition), and Unallocated. I cannot actually adjust any of the partitions except the Unallocated space and the C: (Boot Partition). Is there some way I can merge these two non-adjacent partitions or some highly recommended program that will help me do this? All I would like to do is add the Unallocated space to the C: (Boot Partition).

 

** After doing a little bit of research I found out that Tuxboot, the installer I used to install and set up Clonezilla on my USB drive can also install and set up GParted Live on a USB drive. Having been familiar with Clonezilla just a little I went ahead and booted from this GParted USB and when through the UI settings. It brought me to a pseudo desktop, or rather a Linux desktop, and brought out the tool that allowed me to do whatever I wanted with my partitions. I ended up moving the partition that was in between my C: (Boot Partition) and my Unallocated space to the right on the Unallocated space and then expanded my C: (Boot Partition). This program qued all these actions and in one simple press of a button went through them all and fixed everything.

[Vatruvius]

To anyone who encounters this problem here is a detailed step by step summary:

 

When cloning over your drive use Clonezilla Live. The best way to download Clonezilla is to use Tuxboot installer. Make sure your USB drives are formatted to FAT32 before installing Clonezilla, you can google how to do this. Be careful not to format your boot drive as you will lose everything. Be sure you are confident about formatting your USB drives before actually doing it. Also, make sure the USB is empty because all files on it will be lost in this process. After Tuxboot installs Clonezilla Live to the USB you can restart your computer and go into your computer's boot options and boot from the Clonezilla USB. For a nice video on how to use Clonezilla go here:

After you created a backup of your SSD or HDD, Clonezilla will prompt you to do a number of things; select to restart your computer. Let your OS load so you can set up your GParted USB. You could do this before you boot from the Clonezilla USB and back up your SSD or HDD but this is just the order for which things happened for me. If you end up not having a partition problem, then you do not need to do this step. If you do not know what a partition is or what this problem I am referring to is I will cover it later on.  After GParted Live is installed and set up on a separate USB from the Clonezilla USB, you can go ahead and shut down your computer. If you are not replacing your SSD or HDD, then you do not need to do anything further. If you are transferring your system over to a new system, the following steps apply. If you are replacing your SSD or HDD, then now is the time to open up your computer and take out the old SSD or HDD and put in the new one. I kept my old SSD because it is a functional back up just in case I mess something up. Once your computer is put back together turn it on and go into your boot settings. Boot from the Clonezilla USB and follow the same steps as in the video, however, instead of "savedisk" you will want to select "restoredisk." Here is another video to help with both the setup and use of Clonezilla: 

Now, if you are cloning your OS to a larger SSD or HDD and for some reason it still only displays the space you had on your old SSD or HDD then this part is for you. When you clone over your drive with Clonezilla it takes an exact copy including the partitions of the old drive. This is where the GParted Live USB will come in. Now, if you are running Windows 10 like I am then Windows already has a built-in system to manage your partitions. The extent of my knowledge here only covers Windows 10 so take this with a grain of salt if you are not running Windows 10 as your OS. To manage your partitions, you will want to open File Explorer, right click on "This PC" and select "Manage”. From here you will want to double click on "Disk Management”. All your currently detected drives, including any USB drives currently plugged into the computer, will show up here along with any partitions currently on them. If the boot partition, typically called (C:), is adjacent with the unallocated space of the drive then right click on the (C:) or boot drive, select "Extend Volume...”, and expand the storage of your (C:) or boot drive as much or as little to your heart's content. I suggest doing some research on partitions if you want to do anything other than adding all the unallocated space to your (C:) or boot drive. If the (C:) or boot partition is separated from the unallocated space by another partition, then you will need to use GParted to use that unallocated space.

 

The process is very similar to Clonezilla. Restart your computer and go into your computer’s boot options. Select to boot from the GParted USB and GParted will load. At this point, I felt comfortable enough with Clonezilla to operate GParted without looking up a video as the two programs are very similar. If you are a little anxious not knowing exactly what to do step by step then I recommend watching a video on using GParted. There are just a few settings you need to select before GParted does its thing. For me, that was all the default option presented in the command prompt. After these settings are selected GParted will launch a pseudo desktop. GParted will also launch its partition management software. Using your mouse or mouse pad, you can now select what it is you want to do with your partitions. GParted will queue up all your actions. Once it is all set up the way you want to click “Apply” and GParted will act on all those qued actions. Once GParted finishes you can go ahead and double-click the power button. WARNING: Make sure you still have that back-up SDD or HDD with the OS on it. It is likely that you could move or modify a partition and break the OS on the drive. You won’t know until you boot the computer and let your OS load. If it is indeed broken, then reboot the computer and boot from the Clonezilla USB and go through the same process as we did to restore the disk to the new SDD or HDD. This will give you a clean slate to try the process again. As a rule of thumb, do not move the (C:) or boot drive, only add unallocated space to it. I was able to move a partition Windows reserved to the right of the unallocated space thus allowing me to add the unallocated space to my (C:) boot drive. When I restarted my computer, Windows prompted me to press any key to skip scanning the disk. DO NOT PRESS ANY KEY! After modifying the (C:) or boot drive you will want your OS to scan the disk to know where the partitions are. I do not know enough about partitions and Operating Systems to knowingly want to prevent the scan. My assumption was that it is a good thing the for OS to scan so I let it. The process only took a couple of seconds on my SSD but that may vary depending on the type of drive you installed. Whether my decision to allow the scan is correct I do not know, however, my computer is functioning just as it was before this entire process except now I have an added 750GB of storage.

 

That about sums up the entire process that was my little adventure into cloning and partitioning. A far longer journey than I was expecting but certainly an interesting and informative one.