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clone/migrate OS from SSD

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Hi, 

in the knowledge base of Acronise they describe how to migrate OS to SSD. But this is in the section HDD to SSD and I don't see the a section like SSD to SSD. Would the same method as described in the article (recovery) work in my case:

Currently, I use SATA SSD on my ProBook 440 G4 where I have Windows 10 Edu installed. I bought a m.2 SSD and would like to migrate the OS to this disk and use then the slot where SATA SSD was for HDD as data storage.

Hardware specs:

current: Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250 GB

new: Samsung - PM981a 256GB SSD bulk (MZVLB256HBHQ-00000)

Acronis Knowledfe base has also this recommendation:

Note: It is recommended that your old and new hard drives work in the same controller mode (for example, IDE or AHCI). Otherwise, your computer might not start from the new hard drive.

How can I check it?

P.S. Why I'm getting "you are not allowed to place hyperlinks inside the text" when I want to publish this post?

Regards,

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Walter, taking the easy question about hyperlinks first - this is simply because of the amount of scam posts attempting to create new topics with links to nefarious sites etc, hence new topics are not allowed to have links unless approved by the forum moderator!

Next, to your migration question.  The SATA controller mode used by your existing SSD is defined in the BIOS settings, not in the OS as far as I understand.  I very much doubt that it would be using IDE as that is very old now, so the chances are that it is using either AHCI or else using RAID mode - the latter is often used for improved performance.

The matching of SATA controller modes is more an issue when migrating to different hardware rather than what you are proposing here.

The first action I would recommend is to install the new M.2 SSD in your ProBook 440 G4 (leaving it as uninitialised / unallocated space) to allow Windows 10 to find the new hardware and install any device drivers it needs.

Once the drive is installed and Windows has been restarted, then please forget about using cloning and make a full Disk backup of the working Win 10 SSD to an external drive.

Next, create the Windows PE version of the Acronis Rescue Media using the 'Simple' option in the builder tool (assuming you have ATI 2018 or later).

Now you need to confirm the BIOS boot mode used by Windows 10 on the ProBook as this needs to be UEFI in order to boot from the new M.2 SSD - so in Windows, type the command: msinfo32 and look in the right side column for BIOS mode to confirm it is UEFI.

Next, test booting your ProBook in UEFI mode from the rescue media then click on Tools > Add new disk from the ATI application panel, select your new M.2 SSD and if it shows as being uninitialised, use this tool to initialise the new SSD but leave it as unallocated.

If all the above has gone smoothly, as it should, then you are ready to do the next step which is to recover the backup from the original SATA SSD to the new M.2 SSD.

Note: the original SATA SSD should either be removed from the ProBook, or else initialised as unallocated space if left installed to avoid issues when wanting to boot from the recovered OS from the M.2 SSD.

See KB 63226: Acronis True Image 2020: how to create bootable media and KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

KB 63295: Acronis True Image 2020: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media

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.

Steve, first of all, thank you very much for very thorough answers in this forum.

I already know that the mode of the source SSD is AHCI, then it has GPT and my Windows uses UEFI. I use ATI 2020.

Somewhere in knowledge base I read it is good to put the source SSD out into external enclosure while "restoring" to the output SSD. Is it right?

I will go through the other steps and links here and let know how it is going.

Somewhere in knowledge base I read it is good to put the source SSD out into external enclosure while "restoring" to the output SSD. Is it right?

KB 2931: How to clone a laptop hard drive - 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.

I have always found it best to adopt the same approach for both cloning and recovery from a backup image.  The target drive being in the end location where it will be used to boot from gives the best results for getting the boot settings correct.

Next, create the Windows PE version of the Acronis Rescue Media using the 'Simple' option in the builder tool (assuming you have ATI 2018 or later).

I have already created the Acronis Survival Kit + full system backup before. Would it be appropriate for my purpose?

How can I chek if it is WindowsPE?

Walter, the Survival Kit always uses Windows PE to create the 2GB boot partition.  When you boot from the external drive, you will see the Windows logo during that boot process to confirm that.

The new SSD is in the notebook and is not allocated. But suddenly, I got the similar issue as No. 4831:  cannot boot from my survival kit into Acronis Rescue Media.

So I'm going to follow your instruction:

Next, create the Windows PE version of the Acronis Rescue Media using the 'Simple' option in the builder tool (assuming you have ATI 2018 or later).

But in the Knowledge base they write for the simple step:

If you use Windows 7 or a later version, WinRE-based media will be created

So should I procced to advanced?

What about creating Universal Boot media as I will recover to another SSD?

What about .iso?

I'm going to recover from Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250 GB to Samsung SSD 860 EVO M.2 250 GB on the same Notebook (HP ProBook 440 G4)

BTW: there is a bug in the forum: preview >> save does not work. You should close the window go to comments, open the issue again and then paste (assuming you copied the text before) it, then save works.

Walter, from earlier you said you are on Windows 10, so no need to use the Advanced options for creating rescue media.  You also do no need Acronis Universal Restore media for actions within the same PC such as migrating to a new drive.

Steve,when I created the Rescue Media it was Win RE, you wrote previously that it should be Win PE, I haven't seen this option when creating the media. 

I hope, when I solve the boot issue I can procced to the recover.

Walter, to avoid any confusion here, WinRE is the same as WinPE - the only difference is where the PE files are taken from.  WinRE = the Windows Recovery Environment is the source of the PE files, otherwise, the Windows ADK & PE extra components need to be installed to provide the source for the PE files.