I am replacing my ASUS GL552 laptops SSD C drive with a larger one and want to make sure I am doing it correctly
I have made a macriun image of the old ssd that I will restore on the new replacement
When I boot from the ASUS rescue thumb drive will the laptop start normally and at that time I will be able
to start the macrium recovery to the new SSD I have installed ?
Thanks for your help
Is the new SSD also a M.2 drive?
Is it a MVMe drive? Most MVMe drives need a dedicated driver. If it isn't available on the current installation it wont boot after cloning.
You may need to disable Secure Boot on BIOS to be able to boot from the USB rescue thumb drive.
Hi,
You'd likely need to leave the original install installed with the m.2 installed as well
Install or windows should install a generic m.2 driver and you'll be able to see the m.2 as a drive listing in disk management or settings/ system/ storage.
Once you can see it format it to the same as the original disk mbr or gpt.
Make one large partition spanning the entire m.2.
Open reflect free and make a new winpe recovery cd or flash media
It should now have the driver check list all green
Then shut down and remove the original install and boot to the reflect recovery media with the disk with the system image on it
Point reflect to the system image and to the m.2.
Wait.
thanks for your response
My Asus laptop has 2 drives an ssd (C drive) and a 1TB 2.5" hdd (data)
The ssd is a 256 GB samsung M2 SSD which I want to replace with a new 500 GB ssd
Am a little confused by what you mean when replying:
"You'd likely need to leave the original install installed with the m.2 installed as well
Install or windows should install a generic m.2 driver and you'll be able to see the m.2 as a drive listing in disk management or settings/ system/ storage."
Thanks again for your help
Hi,
Disregard m.2 driver is already installed on the os from the old one.
Just remove and replace m.2's point reflect to the system image and new m.2.
Assuming this system image is not on the old m.2.
You didn't answer my questions on post #2
Hi,
Yeah only thing I don't get is the bold asus rescue thumb drive part
To be clear you'd use the reflect winpe recovery media if that is on the thumb drive then yes
Asus has little do do with this recovery besides all is being done on a asus machine.
Yes you will need to clear secure boot keys before removing the original m.2 ssd.
Boot/ secure boot/ Manage keys/ Clear secure boot keys.
Secure boot will now show as disabled save and exit.
Shut down.
Swap out m.2 ssd's.
Mount winpe flash drive tap... F8 or what ever is the boot menu options key for this machine
Boot to flash drive.
Replace the M.2 disk with the new one.
Boot from the rescue thumb drive. If it can't see the new M.2 disk it's because the rescue drive doesn't have the appropriate MVMe drive.
This is the best rescue drive I've seen. With it you can create an image of your current M.2 drive and then transfer to the new. Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk
I had *much* trouble moving Win10 to a M.2 SSD (and finally punted and re-installed) when it entailed/required a MBR to GPT conversion of the boot disk. My MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Plus motherboard (and Win10) seems to insist on GPT for the M.2 SSD (although I had been using MBR on a SATA connected SSD just fine).
There are *supposedly* several ways to the MBR-to-GPT conversion. One is to use the MS tool, mbr2gpt, which I've successfully used on another computer, but it simply made the Z390 unbootable (after many tries to repair). I also tried Macrium Reflect; the "best" result was it "booted" into black screens (but would dutifully show a shutdown screen if I hit the power button); supposedly, there is a paid MR version that "injects" drivers that *might* make the conversion work. I also tried Veeam Agent which can injects drivers (evidently) in its free version with equally miserable results. I also tried Minitool Partition wizard (which has worked wonderfully many times w/o the MBR-to-GPT conversion), but it creates yet another unbootable/unrepairable system.
I found little reliable, useful, detailed information on the technicalities of the conversion or the myriad of errors that result from the attempts. Because MBR-to-GPT is so mysterious, it seems to be a niche for ransomware-ish tools (that I won't gamble on ... my luck with paid programs is worse than freeware).
For portability and such, I've stuck with MBR too long evidently and will avoid it like the plague henceforth. But, the conversion can be hell for unimaginable reasons. Why the heck is a rearrangement of the boot partitions so difficult?
Anyhow, if anyone has a great resource/guide for doing the MBR-to-GPT conversion, sharing that would be most appreciated.
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