Salta al contenuto principale

M.2 image restore to new M.2 drive

Thread solved

Hi

I want to create an image of a 128GB M.2 drive (laptop) and to be saved on external usb. Then i will replace the M.2 drive with  a new one 512gb, and restore that image to the new drive.

Are there any concerns in doing so or the process it's straight forward?

Thanks

0 Users found this helpful

Andreas, welcome to these public User Forums.

There should be no issues with doing this type of upgrade if you follow the process correctly.  I did the same upgrade on my own HP Omen laptop a couple of months back, upgrading from the supplied Liteon 128GB NVMe SSD to a new Samsung Evo 970 500GB NVMe SSD.

The steps to follow are:

  1. Create the Acronis Rescue Media (WinPE version) on a small USB stick (2GB - 32GB max size) or DVD.
    Test that you are able to boot from the rescue media in NVMe boot mode and see your current 128GB SSD.
     
  2. Make a full Disk backup of the current 128GB drive to your external backup drive.
    Check the log for any errors.
     
  3. Shutdown the laptop fully by holding a Shift key while clicking on Shutdown, then remove the 128GB SSD and replace it by your new 512GB SSD.
     
  4. Boot the laptop from the Acronis WinPE rescue media in UEFI mode with your backup drive connected.
     
  5. Recover your Disk backup from the external drive to the new 512GB SSD.
    Note: do not worry if the partition sizes on the new drive reflect the old SSD sizes.  This can be adjusted later if needed.
    Check the log in the rescue environment before exiting from it.
     
  6. Disconnect the rescue media and external drive and restart the computer from the new SSD.  Check that everything is looking good and as expected.

If the partitions on the new SSD do not use the full size of the new drive, then download a copy of the free MiniTool Partition Wizard software and use this to move the Windows RE (Recovery) partition to the end of the new drive to create unallocated space adjacent to the main OS partition, then resize the OS partition to fill that space.

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

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.

Andreas, please see this forum topic where I documented my own upgrade with screen images included.

Should be as straight forward as Steve notes above. However, as a precaution, don't delete or do anything with the original drive (other than removing it and holding it for safekeeping for the time being in case you need to revert to it).

Also, after restoring the image to the new drive (assuming you follow Steve's steps noted), might need to go into the bios and make sure the new drive is still listed with the first boot priority and change it to 1st if it is not.

ALSO... just to check... are you using bitlocker or other encryption software?  Check first...  If you are, then taking an offline image won't help you and you'll need to take the image while the old drive is booted up.  Best to check with command prompt (run elevated with admin privileges) or powershell to be sure as there are many instances where Windows 10 will be bitlocker "ready" but not enabled, and can cause backup issues offline as well.  

Here's a quick article that shows 3 methods to check. 

https://danielengberg.com/how-to-check-status-of-bitlocker-encryption-on-a-client/