How do you upgrade to a bigger NVMe

nheather

nheather

nheather

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I have a PC which has a 1TB NVMe as the primary drive.

The primary drive was originally a 500GB SATA SSD, but since it and the NVMe are both Samsung, I was easily able to do the migration.

But now I wish I’d put a 2TB NVMe in there, happy to buy one because I can use the 1TB one in another computer but here’s the problem, my motherboard only has one M2 socket.

Is there a way to migrate my 1TB NVMe to a 2TB NVMe simply - the only way I can think is to migrate the 1TB NVMe to a SATA SSD and then from the SATA SSD to the 2TB NVMe. But that is a faff and besides I don’t have a suitable SSD anyway.

Is there any other way?
 
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Just do a fresh windows install, burn ISO install stick off, copy your docs and savegames and other stuff, boot from USB stick install on new drive.

By the time you do all that faff you'd have installed Windows and made a sandwich
 
You can use a caddy/enclosure for M.2 drives.

Another option for boards with 1 slot is a PCIE adapter card, though you'd need a suitable PCIE slot to place that in.
 
hornetstinger said:
Just do a fresh windows install, burn ISO install stick off, copy your docs and savegames and other stuff, boot from USB stick install on new drive.

By the time you do all that faff you'd have installed Windows and made a sandwich
Click to expand...
And then spend a day re-installing all the applications.

Cloning using an external enclosure is the most rational solution.
 
it would take me days and days to reinstall all my music software and apps and such in facti i doubt any of my projects would work afterwaards either with them having bits of software and plugins and other data in odd places on other drives and such not to mention having to remember your passwords etc lol
one issue ive noticed the last couple of days [im considering migrating my os drive to a bigger samsung ssd also] is that most of the nvme usb caddies ive been looking at all seem to hae a max of 2tb allegedly which kinda rules out the 4tb drive ive got that i was thinking of doing this migration over to but if its not bigger than 2tb you might be in luck or there might be bigger capacity accepting usb caddies but most of the ones ive seen are max 2tb
 
yeah unfortunately im on a 5900x so no onboard
ive got 2 gpus though so yeah in my case thats what il do il put it in the slot the second gpu goes in or ive got an x1 slot thingy assuming it doesnt throw a hissy by being on an x1 pcie slot i should be good to go im more thinking from the op perspective
he only has one m.2 i think it said above
thats why i mentioned these issues
he also said its a 2tb i think hes upgrading to so my thing above is also pretty null and void i guess was just worth mentioning i thought lol
 
mark 11:11 said:
it would take me days and days to reinstall all my music software and apps and such in facti i doubt any of my projects would work afterwaards either with them having bits of software and plugins and other data in odd places on other drives and such not to mention having to remember your passwords etc lol
one issue ive noticed the last couple of days [im considering migrating my os drive to a bigger samsung ssd also] is that most of the nvme usb caddies ive been looking at all seem to hae a max of 2tb allegedly which kinda rules out the 4tb drive ive got that i was thinking of doing this migration over to but if its not bigger than 2tb you might be in luck or there might be bigger capacity accepting usb caddies but most of the ones ive seen are max 2tb
Click to expand...
I'd just ignore that supposed restriction and stick a 4TB drive in it.
 
Surely there must be some software nowadays that could be used for cloning setting/configs, the lot really, for non windows applications.
I can feel your pain as the amount of apps Id need to migrate is significant and takes time to do manually
 
im using samsung drives so im hoping that magician can just do this for me but im guessing it will cause some issues LOL!but the op id need to reread the thread dont think that will help them unfortunately
 
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Macrium Reflect, free/trial option. Just clone your boot drive to whatever you want the new primary drive to be.

Used it a bunch of times over the years without issue.

Software like this has been knocking around for decades, you absolutely don't need to do a fresh install every time you change your boot drive, I haven't done that in near 15 years at this point. Too much pointless faff for no reason.
 
Since I'm using Linux, for changing the distro, I make a list of the programs I'm using.
Then back most of the config folders/files, local and remote.
Using Borg Backup, then extract that file, and install the programs, and they work 100%.
 
I installed my new SSD at the weekend and used Acronis true image to clone my Windows old drive to my new one. It took 3 minutes!! I went to put my tools away and came back to the PC and it was done. Changed my boot options in bios and everything was working perfectly, you can get a 30 day trial copy. I have also used Macrium Reflect in the past and that also worked well.
 

For cosnideration if using Bitlocker​


  • BitLocker encrypts the entire drive.
  • When you clone an encrypted drive, the clone tool may just copy encrypted data as-is — meaning the clone won’t be directly bootable or may require a recovery key to unlock.
  • Some cloning tools (like Macrium Reflect, Acronis, or Clonezilla) can handle BitLocker volumes correctly, but only if you decrypt first do you guarantee a clean, bootable clone.
 
I would pesonally just reinstall windows and move files/software over after. Is there a reason why this is not an option for you?
 
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