Adding SSD to Laptop and making it the boot drive
I am new to the forum, so please excuse me if this is an old topic.
I have a Windows 10 laptop with a 1TB HDD. I have purchased a PCIE 500GB SSD that will be installed in the open PCIE slot. The total space presently used on the HDD is about 150GB.
The goal is to transfer the operating system, hidden partitions, all programs and files to the new SSD. In the future the HDD will only be used for file storage.
I assume the process will be as follows:
1. Create an Acronis bootable rescue thumb drive, and verify it is bootable.
2. Create a full disk image backup of the HDD and all partitions to an external USB-connected HDD
3. Install the SSD into the laptop.
4. Boot laptop using the rescue thumb drive.
5. Use Acronis to do a full restore from the external USB-connected HDD to the new SSD.
6. Re-boot into BIOS and tell BIOS to boot from the SSD
Question: When in this process should I re-format the old HDD? I have read the precaution not to have 2 bootable drives in a Windows machine. Does the old HDD need to be removed/disconnected when first re-booting on the new SSD?
Thanks,
Stonebrook
Pat L,
Thank you for your reply. I will receive Acronis and the SSD tomorrow.
Per your recommendation, after creating the full disk image backup of the HDD, I will:
* Disconnect the HDD
* Install the new SSD
* Boot on the rescue thumb drive
* Restore from the external USB-connected HDD to the new SSD
Then I will verify the system can boot from the new drive. Once verified, I'll power down, reconnect the internal HDD, re-boot and format (erase) the old HDD.
Thanks for your help, and I'll let the forum know how it goes.
One thing: if you have a GPT system disk and UEFI bios on your laptop, make sure that you boot the recovery is UEFI mode. Vice versa, if you have a MBR system disk and traditional BIOS system setup, make sure you boot the recovery in MBR mode. This will ensure that the recovery will make the SSD layout match the previous layout.
This is a late follow-up, but maybe it will help someone else.
Bottom line is that I was successful in adding a SSD to a ASUS ROG laptop, leaving the HDD in the laptop, and making the SSD the boot drive.
And along the way, Acronis clone S/W save me from bricking the PC.
I created a Acronis Recovery thumb drive and also a clone image of the HDD on an external USB HDD.
I then installed the SSD, booted on the thumb drive, and used Acronis to create a clone from external USB HDD to the new SSD.
Then while still on the thumb drive boot, thinking I should not boot Windows with 2 bootable drives, I erased the HDD.
Then I found the machine would not boot on the SSD. I did a lot of things, checking the BIOS setting etc. but no luck. The Windows 10 equivalent of the BSD appeared whenever I tried to boot on the SSD.
I reloaded the clone onto the HDD. When bios was set to boot on the HDD, all was well. Still no joy on booting from the SSD.
I found an obscure reference to this problem somewhere on the internet suggesting the issue was the driver for the graphics card. So I set BIOS to boot on the SSD, went to a back page of the W10 BSD where there is an option to boot in Safe Mode. In Safe Mode I when to Device Manager and deleted the NVidia driver.
Re-booted on the SSD and everything worked! The NVidia driver spontaneously re-installed too.
After I was sure all was well, I reformatted the HDD from within Windows.
I have know idea of why deleting the graphics driver worked, but it did.
BTW, the latest generation of WD MVMe SSD are damn fast!
Russ Steinbach wrote:BTW, the latest generation of WD MVMe SSD are damn fast!
This is particularly the case for the WD Black NVMe SSD which apparently performance wise are in the same class as the Samsung 970 (I think I got this from a review in PC Magazine). Cannot remember if it is the 970 Evo or 970 Pro, but I suspect it was the 970 Pro. And the prices of SSDs seem to be in free-fall.
Ian