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Cloning HDD to SSD without usb adapter

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Hello.

I just got a Sabrent rocket NVMe PCIe and it comes with Acronis for cloning my disk. The problem is that i dont have the PCIe-USB adapter and i am not sure if its needed for cloning. In the acronis usage instructions they are using it.

Is it really necesary or can I install the SSD in the motherboard and clone to it then?? If it would be possible. Is the process any different??

Thank you and sorry for my English.

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Jesus, welcome to these public User Forums.

Please see KB 2201: Support for OEM Versions of Acronis Products which applies to all OEM versions of ATI supplied with hardware purchases.

You do not need a NVMe PCIe adapter if you use a different approach to migrating your Windows OS to the new SSD.

I would recommend installing the new NVMe drive in your computer and leaving it unused so that Windows finds the new hardware and installs any device drivers needed to your current working SATA drive.

Next, create the Acronis Rescue Media using the 'Simple' option (if offered in your OEM version) to create Windows PE media on a USB stick or DVD disc.

NVMe drives normally require that your computer boots using UEFI / GPT, so please confirm that your current Windows OS already uses UEFI for the BIOS boot mode.  Run the command msinfo32 command in Windows and look at the BIOS mode value shown in the right panel.

The recommended method to do this migration would be to remove the current SATA drive and connect this externally via a USB adapter, then boot the computer using the Acronis Rescue Media in UEFI boot mode, then clone from the external SATA drive to the new NVMe SSD.

You could also use the Acronis Rescue Media to Recover your full disk backup to the new NVMe SSD.

The key important point is to not attempt to boot your computer with the original SATA OS drive and the new NVMe SSD both installed.  The original SATA drive should be removed before booting from the NVMe SSD.  It can be reinstalled again later after the new NVMe SSD is booting correctly into Windows but the SATA drive should be formatted as a data drive before being put back.

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

Also 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.

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