Upgrade M.2 NVMe SSD

Use Macrium Reflect Free to save an image of the original SSD to the 1TB SSD. Make sure to create a Macrium Reflect USB flash drive rescue drive. Install the new SSD. Boot from the USB Macrium Reflect rescue drive. Restore the image from the old SSD that was saved on the 1 TB SSD to the new SSD.

Install a drive imaging program. Maybe Macrium Reflect Free.

Use the imaging software to create a bootable USB rescue drive.

Image C: onto an external drive.

Power down. Swap M.2 drives.

Boot from the USB rescue drive.

Restore the C: image to the new M.2 drive.

You'll probably want to resize the main partition on the new C: drive to use all available space. (I don't know if Reflect can resize partitions during the restoration.)

It might be simpler to temporarily remove D: and to use that M.2 slot to clone the C: drive to the new 1TB drive, but the above method will at least give you a fresh backup of C:.

I see that "Navy" got in ahead of me. That would work, if you have enough free space on D:. It would also be a lot faster than using an external USB drive. On my own system, I save images of C: to an internal HD.

bobkn said:

Install a drive imaging program. Maybe Macrium Reflect Free.

Use the imaging software to create a bootable USB rescue drive.

Image C: onto an external drive.

Power down. Swap M.2 drives.

Boot from the USB rescue drive.

Restore the C: image to the new M.2 drive.

You'll probably want to resize the main partition on the new C: drive to use all available space. (I don't know if Reflect can resize partitions during the restoration.)

It might be simpler to temporarily remove D: and to use that M.2 slot to clone the C: drive to the new 1TB drive, but the above method will at least give you a fresh backup of C:.

Image C: onto your second installed 1 TB SSD...much easier. Except you don't want to image only C: drive. You want to image the entire original SSD. If you image only C: drive, you will need to create a system partition, which is not all that hard to do anyway,

NavyLCDR said:

Image C: onto your second installed 1 TB SSD...much easier. Except you don't want to image only C: drive. You want to image the entire original SSD. If you image only C: drive, you will need to create a system partition, which is not all that hard to do anyway,

I meant the whole physical drive. If I'd meant the partition, I would have said partition rather than drive.

There are two options:
A)
- Install Macrium Reflect Free
- Remove the 1T Data M.2 NVMe drive and replace it with the new 1T NVMe drive.
- Boot from the 256G drive and clone the drive into the new 1T drive expanding only the C: partition
- Replace the 256G drive with the new 1T drive. Reinstall the the 1T Data M.2 NVMe drive

B)
- Install Macrium Reflect Free
- create a USB Macrium Reflect boot able drive.
- Create a drive image (whole drive) of your 256G main drive and save the image on the 1T data drive
- Replace the 256G main drive with the new 1T drive
- Boot from the USB Macrium Reflect boot able drive
- Restore the 256G main drive image into the new 1T drive expanding only the C: partition.

NavyLCDR said:

C: drive is a single partition, not the entire disk. Diskpart, list volume will prove that. What you implied and the literal meaning of what you stated are two entirely different things. C: drive is a single partition on a disk usually containing multiple partitions. For example, you stated exactly:



Here is Macrium Reflect:

(snip)

I followed the directions, and I imaged C:, then I restored it to the new SSD, but it won't boot. Why not?

I always mean what I say. However, I don't always say precisely what I mean.

I often have to apologize for being too literal-minded. Not this time.