Windows 10: Can I use Macrium Image/Restore process to transfer to NVme SSD

I currently have my Windows system on a 250G SSD (SATA 0). I have read that a good way to upgrade to a new SSD, would be to use Macrium to image the current system, boot to the Macrium USB recovery, then restore the image to the new drive.

Is this feasible if the new SSD (500G) is an NVMe M.2 drive instead of SATA? Should I install the drivers for the new NVMe before I image the current system?

My motherboard is new ASRock and supposedly supports NVMe for boot.

:)

 

Safe Mode

Wayne,

No, the problem SSD was a Samsung 840 Pro on a desktop. I was only using the XPS 15 to test getting into safe mode.

But that brings up another problem. There is currently no way to clone an M.2 NVMe SSD on a laptop as no one appears to make a USB 3 to NVMe x4 adapter. One must do an image backup to an external drive and then a restore to the new M.2 NVMe x4 SSD.

Some image backup programs don't support NVMe x4 PCIe and don't work. I have found Macrium Reflect, paid version, does work. And probably Windows 10's recovery as Win 10 supports NVMe in most cases. The only other possible way is to put the NVMe drives in
a desktop that has multiple M.2 NVMe slots to clone it. My next build will have 3, 1 for it's boot drive and 2 for this sort of work.

Lee

 

Migrating Windows 10 from m.2 sata to new pcie nvme ssd

Hello all,

I'm going to upgrade my current m.2 sata 128gb to a m.2 pcie nvme 480gb and have questions about migrating Windows over. From my understanding since i have a laptop and cant connect both drives at the same time and pcie nvme isnt supported externally I was
going to try and create a restore disk of my current drive and then image it to my new drive. Will this work?

Again my process will be, create rescue disk and image to usb, power down and swap drives, enable usb boot to my usb and power on, run the rescue disk and image to my new pcie nvme ssd.

Does anyone see problems with this? Do I need a large usb or will 32gb work for a 128gb ssd?

 

You don't need to do all that.

• Install M.2. If recognized then proceed.
• Run Macrium from your current Windows, click on "clone this Disk" (250GB SSD Windows disk)
• Select M.2 Drive as destination then drag and drop each partition to M.2 disk
• You will have some unallocated space at the end of M.2 since it has 500GB. You can expand the partition (assuming C drive) by selecting it then click on "Cloned partition properties" to resize the partition for full use of 500GB.
• click next->Finish
• Disconnect the 250GB then reboot.

 

One detail I omitted. When I install the M.2 drive, my motherboard will disable the SATA 0 and 1 ports. So with current configuration I can't just install the M.2 drive.

Maybe I could move the existing Windows drive from SATA 0 to SATA 2, but wasn't sure I could do that?

I might try and see what happens.

 

No problem. Make sure Sata 2 is on first boot order in the BIOS.

 

I will give it a try tomorrow. Thanks.