Rescue restores to uninitialized M.2 SSD?
Hi,
I have been forced to upgrade my M.2 SS boot drive to 2TB. I thought I'd take the presumably cautious route, and clone my current 128GB M.2 drive to a WD Blue WDS200T2B0B; and because my motherboard has only a single M.2 slot, I bought a RIITOP M.2 docking station to perform the clone. However, Windows 10 Disk Management is unable to initialize the WD SSD in the RIITOP dock. After considerable interaction with WD, it appears that my only practical option is install my UN-INITIALIZED WDS200T2B0B into my motherboard, and use Acronis True Image 2019 to restore a fresh backup to the uninitialized SSD.
But I have seen in the cloning instructions for example, that documentation advises to ensure (assumably beforehand) that Windows can see the new disk. As this requires prior initialization, my principal question therefore is, will the restore process (invoked from a rescue media boot) still somehow see and initialize my disk?
Otherwise of course, it would be a waste of time to try the process. So I am assuming that the faults I have experienced are consequences of inadequate RIITOP design.
Alternatively, given a) that my motherboard has a single M.2 slot, and b) that I cannot pre-initialize the disk in the RIITOP dock... is there a practical alternative process for writing a backup state involving the 3 partitions of my current M.2 drive to the new drive?
I have an EFI System Partition, a Windows partition, and a Recovery partition on the original M.2 SSD.
Much thanks for quality advice.
m
Mike,
The main reason for concerns mentioned in regards to a drive not being recognized is that of a proper disk controller driver not being available in the rescue media. Current WinPE media contains native support for the M.2 NVMe disk controller.
Have a look in Windows Device Manager - Storage Controllers and look for the Entry Standard NVM Express Controller. If you see that entry than your M.2 disk is using a Windows native NVMe driver. That driver file name is stornvme.inf You can verify this my looking at MSinfo32 - Components - Storage - SCSI to view attached devices then hover your mouse over the Driver line to view the driver path which includes the name.
If you have installed an OEM driver such as one from the disk manufacturer then you will not see the above. Instead you will see the details of the OEM driver. That driver however does not need to be present in a recovery media however for things to work for you. The key here is that rescue media is by default based on the WinPE standard. Selecting the Simple method Windows version during media creation will carry with it the Standard NVMe Controller driver.
Having said that you should still verify that the driver exists in your current system configuration. If you find that driver in Device Manager then you are good to go. If you find something else then use File Explorer to navigate to C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository which displays an alphabetical list of installed drivers. Locate the stornvme.inf in the list to verify that is exists then, create your Simple rescue media.
Thanks to both Steve and Enchantech for these well-articulated answers. I am ruminating them:
As my principal question explored the possibility that I might need somehow to pre-initialize the yet-uninitialized disk, I therefore assume that Steve's answer, "if you are replacing like for like in terms of the NVMe M.2 SSD architecture not size, then there is no issue with using Backup & Recovery to do the migration..." resolves my concern whether True Image Recovery algorithms will indeed recognize and initialize the disk, if I mount it in the one M.2 slot of the subject Dell Inspiron 5680 motherboard and restore the existing backup to the new drive.
For the benefit of anyone who may depend upon the findings of this thread, I have indeed (as Steve has qualified) attempted to match like to like: Although I did find a Dell technical paper indicating the motherboard might support NVMe, I found no material indicating how (where to download a proper NVMe driver, etc.). Because capacity and not speed was the real issue here, I thus chose a 2TB WD Blue SSD (WDS200T2B0B) to match the SATA III interface of the 128GB LITEON OEM M.2 drive I am replacing.
Although both Steve's and Enchantech's answers appear to be indispensable to "solution" of the suspected need to pre-initialize the subject M.2 upgrade disk, I'm now at least encouraged to try the available Recovery process; but will wait to report the success/failure of the actual attempt. Obviously, I was hoping to avoid redundantly tearing apart my machine, if the recovery process had no capacity to initialize and format the disk. It would be helpful then also, if product documentation indicated explicitly whether uninitialized disks are initialized by Recovery processes, as (for example) the Clone utility is unable to recognize or initialize the disk in the new RIITOP dock. Thus the ability to initialize new disks is a critical concern. Further concerns yet, are whether we have the options 2) to format the Windows and Recovery partitions to GUID; and, 3) whether we have the options to manually size the partitions. For example, the EFI System partition on my original M.2 SSD is 260MB and empty; while I have no known need to rely upon the 750MB NTFS Recovery partition, which has 309MB free. Cloning documentation indicates that the cloning algorithms will upwardly resize these partitions (quite unnecessarily then), proportional to the increased drive capacity.
In any case, I will report my success/failure of the Recovery process in a final post to this thread.
Enchantech's post may further open the door to incorporating an NVMe drive on this motherboard. I am still ruminating on Enchantech's answer, because it implies a course of action for testing whether the subject motherboard might indeed support NVMe. I found no Standard NVM Express Controller on my system. I instead find that my driver is:
c:\windows\system32\drivers\iastorac.sys (17.9.6.1019, 1.29 MB (1,347,464 bytes), 2021-07-11 10:37 AM)
It is a shame that no obvious motherboard documentation indicates whether an NVMe driver enables the later technology as very weakly stated in Dell documentation; but anyone who has the time to play all the necessary games might experiment with the further courses of action which would benefit everyone by uncovering the ultimate answers to that question.
So, both posts are valuable; and I thank you both for the time you have generously spent on the present considerations.
That was a bit hairier than I hoped, but I finally got the job done:
Across the first 3 tries, Recovery did not recognize/see my uninitialized M.2 SSD. In each of these attempts, I manually selected each partition to recover; but on the fourth try, I saw the checkbox above for the whole backup, which automatically selected the same partitions. Recovery then began analyzing the partitions; and then let me recover to the uninitialized disk it finally recognized as a potential target.
I noted in another post by Steve that he instructed how afterward to resize your C partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard. That post was a lot of help too, because the Recovery process simply preserves your original partition sizes... leaving however much unallocated space.
So thanks to Steve for that post too.