Clone my C Drive onto a new SSD

[FishPolice]

What I want is to clone my old 500GB SSD boot drive onto a larger 1TB drive, one of those fancy M.2 drives (I could use a normal SSD but I want to have a go with this new tech).

How simple is it these days, and will things run exactly as they did on the original C Drive? I really can't be bothered to reinstall windoze or set up my Skyrim mod manager file paths all over again.
I saw recommendations on here to use Macrium Reflect for the cloning software.

-do I just fit the new drive, turn on the PC & then set Macrium Reflect loose?

-will it clone it in such as way that it will set a different drive letter, or is there a way to clone it absolutely exactly so that all I need to do is unplug the donor drive once it's finished being cloned and carry on as normal?

-Also, can anyone recommend me an M.2 drive that'll play nicely with my Asus B550-F mobo?

Sorry for the n00b questions. I'm getting old & timid

 

[Murphy]

Create an image of the SSD and a rescue CD/USB, boot into that, restore the image to the NVME, reboot into the rescue CD/USB, choose the fix Windows boot problems on the restore tab, choose the newly restored NVME drive, reboot only this time choose to boot from the NVME and it should all be fine.

Short guide on tenforums (talks about using an image from a VM but the principal is the same for going from SSD to NVME), and a more detailed guide from Macrium on the fixing boot problems that would need to be done before booting into the image that's been restored from the SSD to the NVME drive.

 

[FishPolice]

Thanks @Murphy , that's really helpful. I'll check out those links in more detail tomorrow.
I'll need quite a big medium for the image though I guess? My boot drive has about 400+ GB data on it.
Could I use an old mechanical sata drive to temporarily mount the image do you think?

 

[Journey]

-do I just fit the new drive, turn on the PC & then set Macrium Reflect loose?

Yes, make the Macrium bootable USB drive first though, and boot from that.

You just tell it to create the maximum partition size (e.g. full drive) if going from 512GB to 1TB. it is one of the least complicated ways to do it, and you get a 1:1 copy.

Also, can anyone recommend me an M.2 drive that'll play nicely with my Asus B550-F mobo?

WD SN750 was a good price at ~£90 for 1TB, and the Samsung 980 (not Pro) is about £95.

 

[Murphy]

Could I use an old mechanical sata drive to temporarily mount the image do you think?

Yea, anything will do to store the image on. I guess you could just image it straight from the SSD to the NVME but I've never tried that myself before.

 

[FishPolice]

It worked an absolute treat. I didn't bother with creating an image first, I just went full gung ho & followed the procedure as per instructions from @Journey.

I cloned my c: drive to my new WD SN750 and then cloned my dying d: drive to an almost new Samsung 860. It was so simple, a real relief and a huge weight off my mind as I'd been dreading this and really didn't want to reinstall windows or mess up my heavily modded Skyrim.

I'm so impressed with Macrium Reflect that I think I'll purchase a copy by way of thanks.

 

[Rannoch]

Reflect is great software, saved my ass a few times

 

[Journey]

It worked an absolute treat.

Glad to read it, it's often some of the simplest tasks that can seem the most daunting, especially when data is involved. I would how ever if you have the time/space/money always use the software to make a regular backup of your drive(s) if they are important.

 

[Troezar]

I'm going to give this a try this weekend. I'll have to shuffle drives around as both my 110mm m.2 slots are used.

 

[Danny75]

The drag and drop partitions feature, and the resizing feature, are both very useful. Remember to drag the little EFI/recovery partitions as well. I've used Macrium for cloning and restoring from images (installed Windows PE environment for system images) to good effect.