Windows 10: I cloned a drive to switch my Windows to new M.2 and now its a mess, help me.

So I've had a M.2 installed for a while and haven't gotten around to switching the OS over. Until today. So let me start by saying I'm a total newbie, so take things slow with me and assume I know very little. So I want just wanted windows and my modded version of GTA V on the M.2. So I went into my old drive, and made a partition that held the desktop, documents, downloads, music, videos, and the rest of my games I don't have the space for on the M.2. I did that the correct way, I think at least. I went to properties and moved the location, and it prompted me to create the pathways for them in the new partition. So now I clone the partition with my OS and GTA V. I restart, go into the bios, switch the boot drive to the M.2 and its obviously booting the OS right. But here's the problem. When I boot from the new M.2 drive I'm missing some of the files. GTA V is nowhere to be found anywhere when I'm booting from the new drive. And when I try to access some of the things like documents or downloads, I get a message saying that it doesn't exist. And when I put boot drive back to the old drive, everything is where it should be. I have no idea whats going on. To me it seems like I'm not getting a partition to load in properly when I'm booting from the new drive. Any help at all would help, I am currently stuck and this is my only hope of figuring this out.

submitted by /u/VeryCasualPCGamer
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:)

 

Transfer Bootable Windows 10 Partition to External Drive and then to Replacement Drive

I would consider implementing the steps found here (twice): Cloning windows from a hard disk drive to a m.2 ssd

1. Make the proper back-ups.
   
2. Clone the original m.2 to the SSD.
   
3. Switch to booting from the SSD (in BIOS).
   
4. Clone the SSD to the new m.2.
   
5. Switch to booting from the new m.2 (in BIOS).
   

 

cloning hdd to NVMe m.2

Hi Crocodile_aligator

Yes, Windows will load the correct driver for the NVMe M.2. the first time you boot up Windows 10 from that drive after cloning your drive . . .

 

replacing C: with larger M.2 NVme drive and move programs installed on D: to the new M.2 drive

I have a DELL Desktop Computer XPS XPS8920-7581SLV-PUS Intel Core i7 7th Gen 7700 desktop running Windows 10 Pro with the Toshiba 250 GB M.2 NVme drive as the C: drive and a 1TB hard disk as the D: drive. I have installed a couple of games and applications to the D: drive due to the size of the install files.

I am now planning to replace the Toshiba 250 GB M.2 drive with a Samsung 500 GB 970 EVO M.2 NVme drive.

The procedure I plan to use is to:

• clone the Toshiba drive to a new Western Digital SSD installed in a hard disk bay
  
• replace the Toshiba with the Samsung
  
• clone the new SSD back to the Samsung
  

At that point I should have a bootable C: on the Samsung NVme drive.

The next step would be to move the games and applications from the 1TB hard disk to the Samsung NVme drive since I now have the space for them.

However it is not really possible to just move installed applications due to all the Registry changes that would be needed.

The two applications are Visual Studio 2015 and 2017 (both Community Edition) and the games are World of Warcraft, Destiny 2, and Fallout 4 (the last being a Steam download).

So I am looking for advice on these changes.

Alternative approaches

It seems that I have a couple of options:

• clone the 1TB hard disk to the new SSD and just use the new SSD as D:
  
• uninstall the games and applications then reinstall them to the new C:
  
• create a D: partition on the new NVme drive and copy the installation folders there
  

The easiest approach would seem to be to clone the 1TB drive to the new SSD as D: and move on. However I would be missing out on the NVme goodness with the games as well as the Visual Studio programming environment.

The most straightforward approach would be to uninstall the games and applications from the 1TB hard disk and then reinstall them to the C: drive.

The applications are Visual Studio 2015 and Visual Studio 2017, both Community Edition. These would both be straightforward to uninstall from D: and reinstall to C:.

The games are World of Warcraft and Destiny 2 from Blizzard and Fallout 4 from Steam. These games will require long download time probably two or three days over my internet access. And I would have to start Fallout 4 all over again.

Concluding thoughts

Perhaps the best option would be to combine the first two options.

Since the Visual Studio uninstall and install would be fairly painless I could do that while leaving the games on the 1TB drive and then do the clone of the 1TB drive to the new SSD. Then at a later date I could move World of Warcraft and Destiny 2 over to the NVme drive.

I would think that working with Visual Studio would be easier and quicker from the NVme C: drive while the games would be quick and responsive enough if the game assets are on an SSD.