Looking for a "Cookbook" to Restore to NVMe, Making the NVMe the New Boot/System Disk?
Hello,
Just purchased a Samsung 950 Pro M.2. Motherboard (ASUS X99A/USB 3.1) natively supports M.2. I've looked at some M.2 install guides but most are focused on reinstalling Windows which shouldn't be necessary.
I want to use Acronis Bootable Media #6569 perform a backup, validate then restore to the M.2 drive, making it the boot/system disk going forward. OS is Windows 7 Pro and yes, know Windows 7 does not have native support for NVMe, have downloaded Samsung's driver whichs does support Windows 7, 8, 10.
Assume someone has done this. If so, would you be so kind as to document your steps?
Thanks,
-- Alan


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Have you also verified that your motherboard is on the lates bios alreaday and that it does support PCIE boot? Some older systems can use PCIE drives for data, but the bios will not be able to detect it as a boot drive. You have a nice motherboard though and this should not be an issue (I'm guessing - never used ASUS, only gigabyte so can't say for certain).
01) Install the new NVME drive in your system, initialize it and format it as a new blank drive. Basically, let Windows pick it up and make sure the driver loads/installs (if using Windows 10, you already have it). Just make sure it shows up in Windows. Name the drive something easy to identify - especially if it is the same size as another drive connected to the system. Now you know that A) yous image is going to have the driver in it which will be needed at boot after you copy the OS to the new drive and B) you know the bios is seeing the drive.
02) Verify how your current OS is installed - Legacy or UEFI.
03) Make your Acronis offline bootable recovery media.
This video may be helpful if you have not done this before. HakRon - Acronis True Image Home 2016 Boot from USB | How to create Acronis bootable media - YouTube
04) Boot to the recovery media in the same mode as your OS was verified to be installed in, in step 02 above. This is important as how you boot it, determines how Acronis will parition the drive when you restore (same as like how you boot Windows media during a new installl. Legacy boot = Legacy install / UEFI boot = UEFI install..... same principle for the recovery media). If you can't boot the media, make sure things like secure boot are off. You mahy also want to use your one time boot or boot override menu key at restart so that you can see if the system is detecting the bootable media in both legacy and/or UEFI mode.
Example Dell bios screenshot that clearly shows secure boot is off and the USB has both a legacy option and a UEFI option for booting on the one time boot menu (F12 for Dells after rebooting, not sure about your motherboard though).
05) Select the backup option and just make sure it sees your NVME drive. It should if the bios is configured correctly and Windows was already able to see it. Now, SELECT the original OS drive and make sure the entire disk is selected, to include ALL paritions if you want the drive to be exactly the same. You can opt to not select recovery partitions, or data paritions other than what would be the OS, but to keep things simple, backup everything (you don't have to retore everything, necessarily, but why not have it in your backup, just in case?). Save the backup somewhere other than the original drive or the new one (a third USB drive or something).
Here's another video link Britec - How To Restore Windows 10 from a System Image - YouTube.
This one also shows how to to do recovery which will be your next step SunGod2009 - How to backup and restore using Acronis True image - YouTube
06) Restore the entire image (full disk, all paritions) to the NVME drive now using pretty much the same procedures in reverse as what you did in the backup process.
07) Power down and DON'T attempt to boot Windows yet! Take out the original drive - we want the system to only try and look for the OS on the new NVME drive and we don't want to risk doing anything to the original drive at this point. This is me just being cautious and trying to prevent headaches for you.
08) Try to boot Windows. If the bios is configured correctly and the motherboard supports booting from PCIE drives, hopefully you're done. If it doesn't boot, you may need to check the boot order in the bios. On my new motherboard, I must always have "Windows boot manager" selected in the boot order and it must always be listed as the first option (GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 with 6th gen intel processor). I can not simply select the drive by the drive name and pick it to boot from - no one told me this and I struggled for days with BSOD errors and boot messages that were all false - my motherboard just needs "Windows boot manager" to be selected for UEFI boot and it must be first. In your case, it may be different but wanted to let you know in advance as others have had similar issues. You may have to play around with this part in your bios though if your're not able to boot.
If all is well, you can hold onto the old drive for posterity in case you need to revert back or create another image from it for some reason. Otherwise, once you're comfortable, you can pop it back in but be careful in case the bios tries to use it as the boot drive - you may want to format it with windows already booted and having it attached externally first. Use Diskpart /clean on the CORRECT Drive and then go back into computer management and initialze the disk, format it and assign a drive letter and you're all set.
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In the ASUS AMI bios you have to set the boot mode to UEFI only. Reason is the driver UEFI contains the driver for the M.2 drive to be detected and used as a boot device.
Once you set that up the only bootable devices that will appear in the bios are PCIe attached devices. If you see any other boot devices then the bios is configured incorrectly. What you should see is a Windows Boot Manager -Samsung entry in the boot order until you attach the Recovery Media then you will have the option in the bios to boot from that media.
Boot devices must be registered in UEFI in order to boot the machine. The boot sequence run by a UEFI enabled boot device such as the Recovery Media does this during the POST/boot process.
The only caveat I see here if there is one is that the Win 7 Pro install the poster is using is a 64 bit version UEFI - GPT installation already. If not then all of the above will not work and a fresh install will be required.
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Possibly some closure if Enchantech and Bobbo_3C0X1 don't respond:
Linux based Acronis Boot Media #6569 DID NOT detect newly installed Samsung 950 NMVe drive. It was, however, listed in the Asus X-99A/USB 3.1 BIOS. Tried twice. Ultimately ended up installing Samsung NMVe driver to Windows 7, then backup/validate to NAS. Off-lined incumbent SATA SSD and restored from NAS via Acronis Boot Media #6569 to NMVe "disk". NMVe disk now the boot disk.
Cheers,
-- Alan
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Sounds like you have successfully completed the task. Question, are you booting UEFI? I am thinking you are but would like confirmation.
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How would one determine whether the automatic boot (not using BIOS Boot Menu) is UEFI or not?
Cheers,
-- Alan
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Please run the msinfo32.exe utility and look for the BIOS Mode information for your system.
Right click on Start then selecet Run, then type msinfo32.exe into the Run prompt, click on Ok.
The output will have a line entitled BIOS Mode which will say either Legacy or UEFI.
Post with your result.
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Hmmm "BIOS Mode" isn't within my Win 7 output. Could that be another Windows version you referenced?
Anyway I think I know where you are going. While my X99 rig is new and supports UEFI, the system builder set Asus bios to support of BOTH "Legacy and UEFI", which seems like a good comppromise. Subsequently, all disks are smaller than 2 GB and are MBR formatted. I have a NAS for backups and other heavy lifting.
Thanks for your help,
-- Alan
PS I had the "Notify me when new comments are posted" but never received a single email. What do I have to do to get email notification?
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Thanks for the reply back to confirm your boot method. Not sure what to tell you about not recieving notifications, I have seen others post that problem as well but it has always worked for me.
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I had this happen to me the other day and they were all in my Gmail SPAM for some reason. Next day, messages started rolling back into my inbox again without having to make any changes. Check spam and/or if using Gmail, create a mail rule to never mark mail from Acronis as SPAM and to put it in a spefific folder such as your inbox or a specific folder for Acronis messages.
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