Skip to main content

Move win 10 os from smaller ssd to larger m2 ssd on the same machine.

Thread solved

I am considering buying Acronis True Image to be able to swap my win 10 64 bit OS from a 320gb installed Samsung SSD to a 1TB newly installed Samsung 970 EVO plus NVMe.M.2,  into my GA-Z270X-Gaming 7 Motherboard

My machine currently has 3 SATA drives: 
1 x spinning 2TB drive, for data. 
1 x 320gb ssd used for the operating system
1 x 1TB ssd drive for flight sim.

I need to increase my OS drive capacity. To achieve this, I have added the M.2 drive, it is visible, now that it is initialised. 

I am a bit(lot) confused as to the process. I do not want to remove my current 320 gb operating system SSD (it will become a working drive) and "simply" want to move the os from it and migrate the os to the new M.2 disk. Fire up the machine and everything works, or more likely I have to go into the BIOS and change the boot order to the new M2 disk?

Can all this be achieved with all drives in place and connected? All videos I see refer to, state the original os drive has to be removed.

I have looked at the knowledge area but can’t see my answer.

1 Users found this helpful

Geoff, welcome to these public User Forums.

Before you do anything regarding this topic, please ensure that you have a full disk backup of each of your installed drives, but especially of your current working OS SSD drive.  Make a separate backup image of each different drive and use names that clearly identify which backup is of which drive!

The method that I would recommend that you use for the migration is as below:

  1. Create the ATI 2018 'Simple' version of the Acronis Rescue Media on a USB stick or else a DVD then test that you understand how to boot your PC from this and are able to see all your installed drives, and in particular, the new Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD.
    KB 60820: Acronis True Image 2018: how to create bootable media
     
  2. Check the BIOS boot mode used by Windows 10 on your PC by running the msinfo32 command within Windows.  Look at the BIOS mode entry shown in the right side panel.  This needs to be UEFI to be able to boot from the Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD and the SSD needs to be initialised using GPT partition scheme.
    If the SSD has been initialised using MBR, then you need to re-initialise it to GPT.
    Note: you can use the Acronis > Tools > Add new disk option to do this.
     
  3. I would strongly recommend shutting down and removing or disconnecting all drives that will not be involved in the further steps, including the 320GB OS SSD - this can be added back later once the new NVMe SSD is booting into Windows 10 successfully!
     
  4. Boot the PC in UEFI boot mode from the ATI 2018 rescue media with just the new NVMe SSD and the drive storing your full disk backup of the 320GB SSD connected.  This will make the task of identifying the drives the easiest!
    KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media
     
  5. Recover the backup of the 320GB SSD to the new NVMe SSD.
    See KB 60131: Acronis True Image 2018: how to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media
     
  6. When the restore / recovery is complete, check the Logs information to confirm that all was done successfully.  Log data is lost after leaving the rescue environment!
     
  7. If all is good, then shutdown, remove the rescue media and backup drive, then test that the PC will boot correctly from the new NVMe SSD.
     
  8. If all is still good, then shutdown again and reinstall / reconnect any drives that were removed or disconnected in step 3. above except the original 320GB SSD. 
    Reboot the PC and check that all the drive letters are assigned as expected.
    Note: if any drive letters have changed, then use Windows Disk Management to correct this.  You may need to change or remove an incorrect drive letter from one drive or partition in order to allocate it back to where you want it to be.
    It is a good practise to give your drives / partitions labels that identify them and the drive letter that they use, i.e. D-Data, F-Fsim etc and do this before embarking on this migration process.  This would make any drive letter changes obvious!
     
  9. Connect the 320GB SSD to the PC externally via a USB adaptor or dock etc, then reinitialise and reformat this to remove all the hidden / system partitions in preparation for using this as a data drive.  Windows Disk Management will not normally allow you to delete the hidden / system partitions for a fixed drive, so to do this in Windows, you need to either use an Administrator command prompt and diskpart commands (with great care!) or else use a partition manager tool such as the free MiniTool Partition Wizard software.
    Once the 320GB SSD has been reformatted, then it can be reinstalled internally again.

Hi Steve. Thank you for your very very detailed reply....$%^ hell...here is me thinking,.. with this Acronis tool, 30-45 minutes and all done...easy peasy....great tool...OK, my reading of my jobs to get this done. 

Umm, I have approx. 160, 400 and 300 GB of data that needs separate backup image for my three drives? This can be done on my spinning drive, as its got 1.4TB free.

Your Item No's summarised..

1. Create the ATI 2018 rescue media and practise using it to boot the system. understand boot order and how to change.

2. My Bios are UEFI, and my 4 drives are using the GPT method.

3. I will need to disconnect my C: drive (320GB) (operating system disk) and my E: drive (1TB).

My 2TB drive will have the image backups, so it will be left connected,  as well as the Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD that will receive the copy of the backup of the 320GB SSD. 

4.  Boot the PC in UEFI boot mode from the ATI 2018 rescue media.

5. Recover the backup of the 320GB SSD to the new NVMe SSD

6. Check the Log data straight away to confirm that all was done successfully.

7. Shut the system down and restart. Check that the PC will boot correctly from the new NVMe SSD. Hmmm, I thought I would need to get into the Bios settings to change the boot order from the  ATI 2018 rescue media to the Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD ?? 

8. If all is still good, then shutdown again and reinstall / reconnect any drives that were removed or disconnected in step 3. above. Of course, do not refit the original 320GB SSD. Check all Drives letters etc.

9. Connect the 320GB SSD to the PC externally via a USB adaptor or dock etc, then reinitialise and reformat this to remove all the hidden / system partitions in preparation for using this as a data drive. 

OK Steve, now I have calmed down a tad, the list does not look too hard, if read in bite size chunks. Again, thank you for such assistance.

I shall report back after purchase of Acronis and getting the job done.

Geoff

7. Shut the system down and restart. Check that the PC will boot correctly from the new NVMe SSD. Hmmm, I thought I would need to get into the Bios settings to change the boot order from the  ATI 2018 rescue media to the Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD ?? 

The Acronis recovery process will attempt to set the correct bootability options to allow the PC to boot from the new NVMe SSD.

If you are happy looking at the BIOS settings, then you should see 'Windows Boot Manager' as the EFI boot option with this coming from the NVMe SSD.

The main thing with this type of migration is to keep it as simple as possible and so avoid any mistakes.  Unfortunately we see users who come to the forum after they have chosen the wrong drive to recover to and have no backup of the data that got wiped in the process!  Having your extra drives disconnected or removed keeps them safe!

See the forum topic here for when I did an upgrade from a 128GB SSD to a new 500GB one where I documented the process I used and captured screen shots along the way.

Thanks Steve. It seems many of us go on the M.2 journey.

When I first installed my M.2, I lost two of my drives ??? Then I remembered I had two choices of M.2 placement. I dive into the mb manual, and sure enough, I had placed my M.2 into the wrong location. Swapped it out, and all drives re-appeared. 

So, this week, with your great help, I will attack my upgrade and report back...Scary, but, with little steps AND a back up of everything, as a fall back, pretty straight forward. I saw your comments about the Acronis will attempt to resolve the correct bootability in the bios.

Geoff 

Hi Steve. I eventually found an Australian vendor to sell me a copy of Acronis 2018 and not require a subscription. Super difficult to be able to find a copy of Acronis True Image that I can buy with a perpetual licence. Hopefully my version 2018, build No 15470 will do the job.  

It seems, Acronis are forcing subscriptions for 12 months, rather than sell a product. My view is I buy things...not rent them. Subscribing means in 12 months, the software no longer functions at all.  

Geoff, perpetual versions of ATI are still available including for ATI 2021 but Acronis have tended to make them harder to find for whatever reason!  I am not a subscription person and have no intention of becoming one!

Australia has been a country where Acronis perpetual versions have been harder to find and has been reported in these forums a number of times!

See the image below taken from the Acronis Australia web page showing where the perpetual version can be found!

ATI 2018 should do the job you need it for here!

Hi Steve, Yeah...I never got that far at the bottom of the page, and the buy or upgrade part did not jump out at me, I just read the 3 subscriptions...

anyway, my 2018 perpetual version cost $69, so, hopefully, it will still do the job.

​Hi Steve. OK, thanks to your wonderful set of instructions, the system transfer went very well. I set up a work plan with each instruction separated, so that I could 'tick' off each item as done, and or provide a comment.

The only thing I need to tidy up, though, in the scheme of things, not a biggy, my C: drive now has a couple of partitions that do not appear to do anything!! See the attached pics.

I have two partitions that have a 1,000 MB and 560MB respectively in them, seemingly with no purpose or access. Both these partitions, in Disk Management, will only allow , Delete Volume.

Using Disk Management, I seem to have access to differing things.  

The 350MB healthy (EFI System Partition offers no action. All right click options greyed out.

The Windows (C:) 929.52 GB NTFS healthy (boot, page file, Crash Dump, Basic Data Partition) offers a shrink option and change drive letters and paths.

Looking at the MiniTool Partition program, it displays a differing view of the C: partitions and offers more options:

Anyway, I will make sure now that I have a backup of my drives saved and stored on site as well as in the cloud, should a disaster happen again. While the process was a tad scary, it was more the unknown. Great how the USB boot stick worked so well, and the resultant write of the C: drive, automatically sorted out the master boot record in the BIOS.

Geoff

 

 

 

Attachment Size
569545-212980.JPG 157.97 KB
569545-212982.JPG 193.09 KB

Geoff, looking mainly at your image from MiniTool, all your partitions look just fine with a 128MB Microsoft System Reserved partition, a 1GB Windows Recovery Environment partition, a 350MB EFI System partition, then your main 925GB C: OS partition, with just one remaining small 560MB obsolete Recovery partition that was probably left over from an earlier OS upgrade.

If you want to recover the last 560MB partition, then you could delete this using MiniTool then resize the C: partition to add that space to it.

All the other partitions should be left alone as are all required.

Steve, I removed the 560MB partition and added it to the C: drive. So, my friend, that about does it. With your great assistance, I(we) managed to fit my new M.2 drive, back up my drives, create a usb boot device(now stored away) move the operating system over to the new M.2 drive, resize the partition, and release the previous SSD used for the operating System for general duties.

As you would know, many programs call on the C: drive. Now, for little cost, my C: drive is sufficiently large enough that I need not be concerned when a program really wants to be there.

Thankyou for your fantastic help.

Geoff

 

Geoff, always glad to be able to help another user and great to read of success!