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Migrating to a new SSD

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Hi,

I would like to use Acronis True Image 2019 to migrate from my current internal SSD to an external SSD (in an enclosure) then open the computer and replace the internal SSD with the new one.

Lenovo Thinkpad E15 with Windows 10 Pro installed, with a 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD

I am ordering a Samsung 970 EVO Plus and a QNINE NVMe enclosure

Can I simply plug the new SSD into the external enclosure, plug into the computer, and use the current computer to clone itself to the new SSD using Acronis True Image 2019, without issue?

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Dexter, welcome to these public User Forums.

Sorry but what you are proposing is not recommended and may not result in the new SSD being bootable!

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.

My personal recommendation (having done similar migrations) would be to forget about using cloning and use Backup & Recovery from the Acronis WinPE Rescue Media, where you can remove your internal, working SSD so that it is completely protected against any errors etc.

See KB 61632: Acronis True Image 2019: how to create bootable media
Also KB 61621: Acronis True Image 2019: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media and KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

Note: NVMe M.2 SSD's require using UEFI BIOS boot mode to work correctly and this boot mode needs to be used for both Windows and the Acronis Rescue Media.

The steps in outline are as follows:

  1. Create the Acronis Rescue Media (use the Simple option for WinPE)
  2. Test booting your Thinkpad from the rescue media, ensuring you understand how to boot in UEFI mode and can 'see' your current SSD drive and an external backup drive to hold a full disk backup image.
  3. Make a new full Disk backup of the working SSD to an external drive as a one-off backup action.
  4. Shutdown the Thinkpad, remove the current SSD and replace by the new Samsung 970 Evo Plus SSD.
  5. Boot from the Acronis Rescue Media with your backup drive connected.
  6. Recover the Backup from step 3. to the new SSD.
  7. Check the Log messages before exiting from the rescue media (all logs are lost on exit) to check all is OK.
  8. If all ok, disconnect the external drive, remove the rescue media and restart the laptop normally from the new SSD.
  9. When you have confirmed all is ok with the new SSD, make a new backup again to include any new device drivers installed for the new SSD.

Note: if your new SSD is larger than the original 256GB SSD, then you may find that ATI has not expanded the C: OS partition to use the full new size of the new SSD.  If so, then this is quite simple to resolve as below:

First, download a copy of the free MiniTool Partition Wizard software, install this, then use it to move the Windows Recovery partition (that is shown after the C: OS partition) to the end of the available unallocated space. 

Next, resize the C: OS partition to use the available unallocated space.

When doing the restore of your backup, this needs to be done as a Disk & Partition restore and at the top Disk selection level.

Please see forum topic: [How to] recover an entire disk backup - and in particular the attached PDF document which shows a step-by-step tutorial for doing this type of recovery / restore.

Like Steve Smith, I have found creating a backup then recovering to the new drive, in the way he describes, as the most reliable way of migrating to a new drive. 

Ian