Direkt zum Inhalt

Cloning Surface Pro 8 to new SSD

Thread solved

Hi All,

I looking for help with cloning my existing Surface Pro 8 installation to new SSD that just arrived. 

I looked at online tutorial but it is confusing at best and missing information. 

It says that I should install new SSD in the laptop and then connect old one via USB to clone it. 

1. So does that mean that I am supposed to install Windows 11 on new SSD and Acronis software so I can clone USB SSD with my existing OS to this new SSD?

2. What about BitLocker - should I decrypt current OS SSD before removing it and installing it in USB caddy? or will Acronis be able to deal with it somehow during cloning (I assume it would have to ask me for encryption key?)

My Surface Pro 8 has one m.2 NVMe 2230 SSD in it, which is by default encrypted with BitLocker.

Would it be easier - and possible at all to:

1. Decrypt if needed my current OS SSD

2. Remove it from SP8 and into USB caddy and use my desktop to create full clone image of it

3. Install new SSD into caddy and connect to desktop PC holding Acronis clone image 

4. Clone previously created image to new SSD using desktop PC

5. Install new SSD into SP8

 

Thanks

0 Users found this helpful

Sebastian, welcome to these public User Forums.

  1. No.  You would need to create and boot the laptop using Acronis rescue media to perform the clone or recovery.
  2. BitLocker encrypted drives cannot be cloned without either unlocking or removing the encryption.
  3. No.  There is no guarantee that cloning to the new SSD in an external caddy would produce a bootable drive when it is moved internally!
  4. No.  Using a different PC will introduce different hardware that can cause issues.
  5. Yes.  That is the recommended method but see further comments below:

Assuming that you already have Acronis installed on the SP8, then please make a full disk backup of the working current SSD to an external storage drive.  When you do this from within Windows, then BitLocker is unlocked and the backup image will also not be encrypted!

Next, ensure that you have created Acronis bootable rescue media on the SP8 using either the 'Simple' option of the Acronis Bootable Rescue Media Builder tool, or else use the MVP Assistant tool.

Test that you understand how to boot the SP8 using the Acronis rescue media in UEFI BIOS boot mode (as normally required for M.2 NVMe SSD's) and that after booting from that media that you can 'see' the internal drive (even if it is shown as encrypted at that point).

Once you have done the above, then instead of using cloning, you can remove the current old SSD card, replace it by the new SSD, then boot the SP8 using the rescue media along with your backup storage drive connected, and recover the full disk backup direct to the new SSD. 
Note: the SSD will be restored with no encryption so you will need to re-enable this when all is finished.

KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

KB 69472: Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office: how to create bootable media

MVP Assistant - New 2.0 with Rescue Media Builder (New Version 2.3.2) BETA Version 2.4.0.1 available, see posting below.

See forum topic: Steve migrate NVMe SSD where I have documented (with images) the process that I have used multiple times for my own laptops using Backup & Recovery. 

KB 69427: Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media

Please see KB 56634: Acronis True Image: how to clone a disk - and review the step by step guide given there.

Note: the first section of the above KB document directs laptop users to KB 2931: How to clone a laptop hard drive - and has the following paragraph:

It is recommended to put the new drive in the laptop first, and connect the old drive via USB. Otherwise you will may not be able to boot from the new cloned drive, as Acronis True Image will apply a bootability fix to the new disk and adjust the boot settings of the target drive to boot from USB. If the new disk is inside the laptop, the boot settings will be automatically adjusted to boot from internal disk. As such, hard disk bays cannot be used for target disks. For example, if you have a target hard disk (i.e. the new disk to which you clone, and from which you intend to boot the machine) in a bay, and not physically inside the laptop, the target hard disk will be unbootable after the cloning.