Clone M2 Drive To M2 Drive

GazzaMataz

GazzaMataz

GazzaMataz

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OK I have a 512gb M2 drive with Windows on and another 1gb M2 which I use for data. My PC supports three M2 drives. My 512gb is getting too small so I thought I would clone Windows from it on to my larger M2. For this I was going to use Acronis and I have watched a couple of tuts but I have a few questions. If I clone from my C: 512gb M2 to my F: 1gb M2 will the F drive become C: drive or stay as F? Also if I keep both drives in the PC presumably I would have to go to my boot menu and choose the larger M2 as my boot drive. Also once I have done this the one time I can then reformat the old 512 drive and use that for data and also change the drive letters around?

Any tips most welcome and thanks in advance :-)
 
ive done this a few times using Macrium reflect. I have a usb "M.2 enclosure" so i put the boot drive in that on another PC. clone the drive, then put the new drive back in the PC, and all has always been well. If you dont have access to another PC, you could try what you suggest, ive been cautious of doing that in case it doesnt copy the files in the C drive properly while your loaded into windows. You could use the USB boot recovery thing that you can usually create with macrium etc, then your not "in windows" so there should be no issues with the clone. i'd then remove the "old" SSD and test boot from the new one to check all was well.

ive found the m.2 enclosure to be a very handy tool to have.

just to confirm, you will lose the data on your 1TB M.2 by doing this.
 
Thanks for the reply champ222. The method that I have watched using Acronis it to create an Acronis USB Boot Drive where you boot up from that USB drive and then use the Acronis software to clone your drives. One other thing I have seen is that once you have cloned your drive it seems that if you try to reformat your old drive you have to remove all the partitions since a simple format won't work. You have to go into command prompt and clear the old drive out then format/initialise it.
 
If the new drive is a Samsung you can use Samsung Magician without having to run a seperate boot environment (having done this myself back in 2019 a couple of times in multiple PC's and laptops).
 
Got 5 x m2 and 4 x sata ssd lol
Acronis gives me a scheduler error
So even though I got it for free I binned it

Speaking for macrium
I have both cloned within and outside windows
No issues with either method
The drive you boot from becomes C
Usually a quick format works fine don't usually need
To use diskpart

And yes depending what drive
You may get a free cloning/imaging software
From manufacturer
Or even sometimes from motherboard manufacturer
 
you can do that with the reflect trial !
i dont think there is a free version any more
but that is what we used to use at work albeit the paid up one !
it worked very well even for boot drives when we upgraded systems from hard drives to solid drives :)
 
Roadrunner_668 said:
you can do that with the reflect trial !
i dont think there is a free version any more
but that is what we used to use at work albeit the paid up one !
it worked very well even for boot drives when we upgraded systems from hard drives to solid drives :)
Click to expand...
Free versions still out there
Just won't get updates and support
Last I looked anyway
Those would be important for a business probably
But for a home user not so much
 
Thanks for all the replies peeps - much appreciated. I got it all working in the end using Acronis. So what I did was create a boot disk from Acronis (after backing everything up) and then simply cloned my M2 512 to my M2 1gb. It took a while and I had to go into the BIOS/UEFI and set the boot priority to the larger M2 and it all works it even swapped the drive letters around for me which I didn't expect, so F (1tb M2) became C and C (512mb) became F -Happy Bunny!

Hope this helps others out there who might be contemplating the same swap and the best thing is it cost me nothing :-)
 
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