ATI 2021 - Moving from NVME to NVME with only 1 M.2 slot

RF, from my personal perspective having upgraded my own single NVMe M.2 SSD several times, I would recommend using Backup & Recovery, not using cloning or needing to use an external NVMe adapter.

See forum topic Steve migrate NVMe SSD where I documented the process that I have used successfully.  

Thank you Steve.

I assume that the offiline steps at the start of the process are accessed using the ATI bootable media.  Does this need to be WinPe or Linux?  Also, do I need to make a new version of the recovery media based on the current version of ATI 2021?  I ask because I have rescue media that I made last year and I know that an update of ATI2021 was released earlier this year and I know I have updated to the mosts recent version.

Where can I find Partition Wizard?

Why do you not suggest using cloning given this is one of the selling points of ATI?  I am happy to use whichever method is most likely to work without causing any issues but am interested to know why you do not suggest the cloning feature.

Finally, should I be decrypting the original disk before starting the process.  What I do not want to happen is find that the BIOS fails to see the new disk etc.

I have always used WinPE media when dealing with NVMe drives, not the Linux media which is missing important driver support.  There should be no significant changes to your ATI 2021 Rescue Media from the recent new build released by Acronis as this was primarily aimed at security for connections to the Acronis Cloud and Dashboard servers.

Cloning in my opinion is inherently more of a risk than using Backup & Recovery as it exposes both the original and new drives to any issues or errors that may arise, whereas with Backup & Recovery, the original drive can be removed completely and put in a safe, offline place, allowing it to be used later as an emergency backup.  Unfortunately, errors can occurs when cloning and we have seen too many such issues reported in the forums where users have ended up with a non-booting system.

With regards to BitLocker encryption, any Acronis Backup created from within Windows will not be of the encrypted source drive as this has to be unlocked at that point for Acronis to capture snapshot data, so the later Recovery will result in a non-encrypted new drive where BitLocker will need to be re-enabled.

You can download the MiniTool Partition Wizard from the link shown here.

Thanks Steve for the further infomation.

I note your comments about the Bitlocker status and the fact that when ATI does a backup from within Windows this is unencrypted.   Is this true when the backup is done from the WinPE rescue media?

So should I decrypt the original nvme and disable Bitlocker in GPE before I use the recsue media to create the backup? 

If you attempt to backup a BitLocker encrypted drive using WinPE media you will into another but different issue.  First is that Acronis will refuse to do the backup if the drive is locked and may not be able to identify the correct size of the drive or see any partitions etc.

Second, you would need to ensure that you have BitLocker support included in the rescue media and then also understand how to unlock the BitLocker using a command prompt in the PE environment.

I would suggest doing the Backup from within Windows of the source, smaller SSD with BL still enabled.  The backup image will not have encryption enabled other than if you use the Acronis password option for this.

Shutdown the PC, remove the small SSD and replace with the new one, then boot the PC using the rescue media to do the recovery to the new SSD.

If all is ok after the recovery then you can re-enable BL on the new drive and still have the old one as a backup option and protected by BL.

Thank you again Steve.

Follow up questsions:

1. How do I create a rescue disk with Bitlocker support?
2. How do I unlock the drive from the Command Prompt from within the PE?

Your suggestion of how to get around the issue seems to make sense.  If I do that and do not decrpyt the original drive can I then reinstall it in the PC at a later date with no issues in case there is an issue with the new larger drive>

You can use the MVP Custom PE builder tool to create rescue media with BitLocker support - the latest version 1.90 of the MVP tool can be downloaded from the link given.

Unlocking the drive from a command prompt works as shown below but you will obviously need to supply the correct key.

If you create the 'Simple' version of the ATI 2021 rescue media, and do this on Windows 10 Pro which has BitLocker support, then this is included in the rescue media but there are some steps that are needed in order to access a BitLocker encrypted drive in the rescue environment.

When you boot into the rescue environment, you will see a black Command prompt window along with the main ATI 2021 application window.  You need to close the ATI 2021 window in order to have access to the command prompt in the black window.

Now, you can use the BitLocker commands to identify and unlock your encrypted drive before relaunching the ATI 2021 application again using "X:\Program Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome\trueimage_starter.exe"

See the following data captured from my own system booted from the ATI 2021 Simple rescue media with an encrypted drive connected.

X:\windows\system32>wpeinit

X:\windows\system32>"X:\Program Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome\trueimage_starter.exe"
Terminate batch job (Y/N)? n

X:\windows\system32>manage-bde -status

BitLocker Drive Encryption: Configuration Tool version 10.0.19041
Copyright (C) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Disk volumes that can be protected with
BitLocker Drive Encryption:
Volume C: [Windows]
[Data Volume]

    Size:                 200.83 GB
    BitLocker Version:    None
    Conversion Status:    Fully Decrypted
    Percentage Encrypted: 0.0%
    Encryption Method:    None
    Protection Status:    Protection Off
    Lock Status:          Unlocked
    Identification Field: None
    Automatic Unlock:     Disabled
    Key Protectors:       None Found

Volume D: [SSD-Data]
[Data Volume]

    Size:                 263.29 GB
    BitLocker Version:    None
    Conversion Status:    Fully Decrypted
    Percentage Encrypted: 0.0%
    Encryption Method:    None
    Protection Status:    Protection Off
    Lock Status:          Unlocked
    Identification Field: None
    Automatic Unlock:     Disabled
    Key Protectors:       None Found

Volume L: [Label Unknown]

[Data Volume]

    Size:                 Unknown GB
    BitLocker Version:    2.0
    Conversion Status:    Unknown
    Percentage Encrypted: Unknown%
    Encryption Method:    AES 128
    Protection Status:    Unknown
    Lock Status:          Locked
    Identification Field: Unknown
    Automatic Unlock:     Disabled
    Key Protectors:
        Password
        Numerical Password

Volume H: [Data]
[Data Volume]

    Size:                 114.10 GB
    BitLocker Version:    None
    Conversion Status:    Fully Decrypted
    Percentage Encrypted: 0.0%
    Encryption Method:    None
    Protection Status:    Protection Off
    Lock Status:          Unlocked
    Identification Field: None
    Automatic Unlock:     Disabled
    Key Protectors:       None Found

X:\windows\system32>manage-bde -unlock L: -password
BitLocker Drive Encryption: Configuration Tool version 10.0.19041
Copyright (C) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Enter the password to unlock this volume:
The password successfully unlocked volume L:.

X:\windows\system32>dir L:
 Volume in drive L is Seagate250gb
 Volume Serial Number is 1052-D550

 Directory of L:\

07/11/2020  00:08    46,379,683,840 MyBackup(1).tibx
05/11/2020  00:51    45,030,981,632 MyBackup.tibx
               2 File(s) 91,410,665,472 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  158,538,076,160 bytes free

X:\windows\system32>"X:\Program Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome\trueimage_starter.exe"

X:\windows\system32>

Thank you once again Steve.

I am just about to move my OS from a PC to a new, larger, NVME drive.  Is the above guidance still current.  I still ony have ATI 2021, not CP.

Should I create a new version of the backup media?  When I try to download the MVP version, which includes the Bitlocker support, my brower, which is Firefox, tells me that this is not safe and from an unknown source.  Is it safe to download the file?

Thanks for your help.

Dear RF,
Thank you for reaching out. Steve's advice is still relevant. We would also suggest checking this article: Acronis True Image 2021: Restoring to dissimilar hardware with Acronis Universal Restore | Knowledge Base

RF wrote:

<<<SNIP>>>   When I try to download the MVP version, which includes the Bitlocker support, my brower, which is Firefox, tells me that this is not safe and from an unknown source.  Is it safe to download the file?

Thanks for your help.

I did not have this happen when using Firefox to download the latest version of the MVP assistant. I got the download link this thread. No problem with Edge or Chrome either.

Edit: Just noticed that earlier in this thread Steve Smith offered the following comment:

You can use the MVP Custom PE builder tool to create rescue media with BitLocker support - the latest version 1.90 of the MVP tool can be downloaded from the link given.

I get a similar warning in Edge. It is possible to "override" the warning in Edge. The real question is: Is it safe to download and use. I have not used that version recently. No issues arose when I used it. When I first downloaded the file, I do not recall there being a warning.

Ian

The false positive warning when downloading the older MVP Custom PE builder tool from Mustang's website is caused by the use of AutoIt within the tool.  The tool itself is safe but has been superseded by the new MVP Assistant which can do the same & more when creating rescue media, so is the tool recommended to use.

Thanks Ian and Steve.

I will download the latest MVP tool.

Can you please confirm that Steve's advice regarding restoring, rather than cloning, to a new drive stands good.  Also, the fact that I have ATI 2021, rather than the latest CP version, will not prevent me from doing this.

Just for the avoidance of doubt, especially in my mind, will the new MVP Assistant wihich includes the PE builder work on a Windows 10 Pro machine which has AT1 2021 rather than ACPHO?

RF wrote:

Just for the avoidance of doubt, especially in my mind, will the new MVP Assistant wihich includes the PE builder work on a Windows 10 Pro machine which has AT1 2021 rather than ACPHO?

Yes.

+1 I am still using ATI 2021 + the MVP Assistant tool on my main system.

Thank you Bruno and Steve for confirming.

One other point, which is not really to do with ATI but rather the forum, can you confirm how I make the system send me notifications when new comments are posted.  I have looked in My Account and as far as I can see I have ticked all the boxes to inidcate I want to receive email notification when new content is posted but since I asked my question on 9 November I have not received any notificatons.  I only know you have answered my questions because I have logged into the forum manually.

Thank you for your help.

Notifications from the forums tend to be bunched together when the moderator or similar gets round to letting them fly!  I expect I will get a notification about your update above sometime in the next day or two!

Thanks Steve.  How do I contact the moderator to see whether I have my profile configured correctly to receive notifictions?

If you click on the Account icon (person) at the top right of the forum when signed in, this will open your Forum account page where you can check your notifications settings as you scroll down the page.

Thanks Steve.

I had checked this page and the only difference I can see is that I had "Receive notification for solutions" box ticked.  I have unticed ths and will see whether this solves the problem.

I have not receiged any notifications regarding my last series of posts.

Dear RF,
You can contact me if necessary through "dialogs", you have to open person's profile and press "send message" button.

I am pleased to say that following Steve's advice for migrating the nvme drive I have successfully completed this task.

However, I am stuck on the part where I use the unallocated space on the new 1TB drive.  I have downloaded v12.6 of MiniTool Partition Wizard but cannot find the Extend option.  I have had a look at their manual and it seems to suggest that I should use their bootable media to do this.  When I try to download the bootable media I seem to pay.  Is there a free version or anotyher piece of software I can use to acheive the same end?

A step by step guide would be helpful as i have not done this before.

When you look at your 1TB drive in MiniTool PW, what are you seeing?  An image would help us to advise you better.

Typically, you need to select the Windows Recovery partition then from the options, select to Move / Resize that partition and move it to the end of the available drive space, after which you can select the C: partition and resize it to expand to fill the available free space.  You should be able to do the above operations from within Windows, then click on the Apply button to complete the changes which will probably want to do a restart of Windows to perform the changes on disk.

Thanks for such a quick response Steve.

I have selected the Recovery Partition, right clicked and chosen "Move/Resize".  I can see that I can change the sizes of the partition but do not seem to see a faciltiy to move the entire partition.  I have looked at the help screen and this just says use the handle to move it but this does not seem to work and I do not want to cause any problems.

Can you please provide some more advice or screen shots.

Select the partition then click on Move which will show the mouse as 4 headed arrows, click and hold the mouse and simply drag the partition to the right then release the mouse button when done.  To resize, hover the mouse over the left or right end of the partition and again click & hold to drag the end out to increase / decrease the size.

Thanks Steve.

Does it matter that between my C Partition I and unallocated space I have another partition called  NTFS?  Do I need to move this as for the Recovery Partition before tyring to extend the C Partition?  I have uploaded a picture.

I would suspect that the 500MB NTFS partition after your C: is an old recovery partition left over from an earlier version / installation of Windows, so this should either be deleted or moved to the end of the unallocated space.

You can check the location of the active recovery partition by using the reagentc /info command from an Administrator command prompt or Powershell window.

The Windows RE location: line will show the path to the partition, i.e. on my system see below:

PS D:\powershell> reagentc /info
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration
Information:

    Windows RE status:         Enabled
    Windows RE location:       \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk1\partition5\Recovery\WindowsRE
    Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: 4d60d2e7-12a7-11ed-ae87-dc87f5f8e45f
    Recovery image location:
    Recovery image index:      0
    Custom image location:
    Custom image index:        0

REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful.

One key point about the above, harddisk1 is the first disk drive but Windows starts at zero, so in MiniTool, it is shown as Disk 2 as they number (like Acronis) from 1, not 0.

So on my PC, the recovery partition is on Disk 2 and the 5th Partition on the drive (at the end).

Some systems start the disk numbering sequence as Disk 1.  It is best to open Windows Disk Management tool to see how your machine numbers disks.  Settings - Disk Management from a right click on the Windows flag.

Thank you both for your help.

I have moved both the Recovery Partition and NFTS Partition to the end and then extended the size of the C: Partition.

I have attached screen shots of both the Command Prompt screen and MiniTool screen after I have undertaken the above tasks.

Can someone please confirm that these look as they should. I apologise for my ignorance.   I thought I had moved the Recovery Partition to the end but it does not look as if it has moved.  This is not an issue if it does not cause any problems.

Thank you all once again.

The image looks fine and the NTFS partition looks to be the active recovery partition.

Thanks for confirming Steve.

Is there any reason why the Recovery Partition, partition 3, is not the Recovery Partition but partition 5 which is just shown as NFTS is.  Will this cause a problem going forward?

Microsoft have tended to be 'lazy' about removing unwanted / obsolete recovery partitions on systems that have been upgraded from older Windows versions, so if you were to search on recovery partitions you will find lots of posts about them, including removing redundant ones.

If the active recovery partition is working and shown correctly as per your image, then there shouldn't be any problem with either leaving the redundant one alone or removing it and giving that space to the OS C: partition.   If erring to caution, then take a full disk backup for good measure first.

Thanks Steve.

As the amount of space taken up is only c500Mb I think I will leave it where it is as adding that to C: on a 1TB drive is immaterial.

This machine has always, and only, been a Windows 10 machine.

Steve,

One further set of questions.

I have examined the free space on my old OS drive, which amounts to 16.4GB out of a total of 237GB, and compared this to the free space on my new OS drive which is 723GB out of 930GB and wonder why the used space is different i.e. on old drive used space is c220GB whereas on the new drive it is c207GB.  This is a difference of some c13GB.

Is there any reason why this should be the case?  Has something not be restored?  If so, how will I find out what it is?  I have inspected the folders on the old drive and the new drive, including Windows and User, and they all seem to be the same size.

Is there anything I can do to easily idenitify the difference and is this something I should be worried about?

I have uploaded a picutre of the drives for your information.

The difference in size is most likely explained by the default exclusions applied by Acronis when making the backup, i.e. system paging file, hibernation file, swap file and all temporary files etc. The main system files are recreated when Windows is launched hence no need to save them.

You could use a tool such as TreeSize Free to compare old and new drives if you want to try to find where the actual main space is missing from?

Thanks Steve.

I have use the tool and confrim that there is a folder which contains the files you mention above on the old drive.

Why is there not similar files on the new drive?  I suspect there are but I just have not found them.

If your old drive is showing the missing pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, swapfile.sys etc, then they are excluded by default from the backup image because get recreated on restart of Windows.  These are hidden system files.

Thanks Steve.

I may not have expressed my question very well, for which I apologise for.

My queastion is that if I can see the mentioned files on the old drive why are there not similar files on the new drive?

I appreciate that ATI does not back these up as they are recreated by the OS.

The normal reason would be that 'Show hidden files / folders' is not enabled for Explorer in its options.