Question Can I connect a Corsair MP600 SSD as an external drive?

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MrYossu

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I have a Corsair MP600 SSD, which is currently plugged into my motherboard. The invoice from the people who built my PC says it's a "Corsair Force PCIe Gen.4 MP600 1TB NVMe", which I think must be this one.

I would like to be able to remove it, and plug it in as an external drive, but am a bit lost working out what cable I would need to do this.

I had a look on Amazon (as good a place as any to start I guess), and there are quite a few, but many have warnings about not being compatible with various types of interfaces. I don't understand M.2 enough to know what would work with my drive and what wouldn't. I saw this one, which seems to fit the bill, but I'm a bit nervous about buying before I know it will work.

Anyone able to advise? I don't need anything fancy, this will be a one-off usage, so the cheapest cable that works would be fine. Don't need a casing, etc.

Thanks for any help you can give.
 
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MrYossu

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@USAFRet I want to clone my current Windows 10 installation onto a spare drive, plug that spare into my PC instead of the Corsair, then wipe the Corsair (which is the one-off use for the cable), then plug the Corsair into my PC, and install Windows 11 on it as a dual boot.

If you can think of a way to do this without a cable, I'm happy to hear it, but this was the only way I could think of managing it. I want to end up with Win11 on the Corsair. Once I'm happy I've got everything off the spare, I'll remove it from the PC.

Any comments? Thanks for the reply.
 
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Lafong

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Windows booting from an external is somewhere between problematic and near impossible the last I heard.

But you can easily use the Corsair as an external data drive as necessary. I use one--pretty much like a USB drive, but with high capacity and much higher speeds than a standard USB flash drive.

If you want dual boot 10 and 11, the standard advice is 2 internal drives, preferably totally different physical drives, rather than 2 partitions on the same drive.

If you now have the Corsair internally on Windows 10 and want to move to Corsair internally on Windows 11, just upgrade it where it sits.

If you want to clean install Windows 11 on the internal Corsair, copy any personal files from the Corsair to any external. Clean install 11 onto the Corsair. Then copy back your personal files from the external.

Or am I not understanding your intent?
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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MrYossu said:
@USAFRet I want to clone my current Windows 10 installation onto a spare drive, plug that spare into my PC instead of the Corsair, then wipe the Corsair (which is the one-off use for the cable), then plug the Corsair into my PC, and install Windows 11 on it as a dual boot.

If you can think of a way to do this without a cable, I'm happy to hear it, but this was the only way I could think of managing it. I want to end up with Win11 on the Corsair. Once I'm happy I've got everything off the spare, I'll remove it from the PC.

Any comments? Thanks for the reply.
Click to expand...
What is the spare dive?

This is all going into the same (original) PC?

End state being:
Corsair with new Win 11 install
Other drive with the existing Win 10
Both connected as regular internal drives.

Is this correct?
 
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MrYossu

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Lafong said:
Windows booting from an external is somewhere between problematic and near impossible the last I heard.

snip...

Or am I not understanding your intent?
Click to expand...
Maybe I wasn't clear, but no, that wasn't what I meant. I have no intention of attempting to boot from an external drive, I only want to plug the Corsair in as an external drive so I can wipe it, in order to be able to plug it in internally to set up the dual boot.

Thanks for the reply.
 
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USAFRet

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-----------------------------
Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
-----------------------------
Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Both drives must be the same partitioning scheme, either MBR or GPT
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung target SSD)
If you are cloning from a SATA drive to PCIe/NVMe, you may need to install the relevant driver for this new NVMe/PCIe drive.
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD
Power up

Verify the system boots with ONLY the current "C drive" connected.
If not, we have to fix that first.

Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive

[Ignore this section if using the SDM. It does this automatically]
If you are going from a smaller drive to a larger, by default, the target partition size will be the same as the Source. You probably don't want that
You can manipulate the size of the partitions on the target (larger)drive
Click on "Cloned Partition Properties", and you can specify the resulting partition size, to even include the whole thing
[/end ignore]

Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD. This is not optional.
This is to allow the system to try to boot from ONLY the SSD

(swapping cables is irrelevant with NVMe drives, but DO disconnect the old drive for this next part)
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe all partitions on it.
This will probably require the commandline diskpart function, and the clean command.

Ask questions if anything is unclear.
-----------------------------
 
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MrYossu

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USAFRet said:
No external adapter needed.

Clone directly from the Corsair to the 840 Pro
Remove the Corsair and verify all is working on the 840
Disconnect the 840
On the Corsair, either boot to Win 10 and do an inplace upgrade to Win 11.
or
Just do a full wipe and install of Win 11.

Later, reconnect the 840, and off you go.
Click to expand...
I'm with you most of the way. I'm just unsure about installing Win11.

To be clear, I want a completely fresh install of Win11, not an upgrade, as my current Win10 installation is flaky. I want a fresh start.

So, let's say I go through all of this to the point where I have the PC with only the 840 plugged in and successfully booting into Win10.

I now plug the Corsair back in, which gives me two identical Win10 installations. How do I make it boot from the 840 and not from the Corsair? I'd need to be able to do that in order to install Win11 on the Corsair. This is where I got stuck thinking it through, which is why I thought I needed to attach the Corsair as an external drive to wipe it, before plugging it back inside to install Win11.

Thanks again.

P.S. Thanks for the detailed instructions about cloning. As it happens, I'm OK with that, as I have Macrium Reflect doing a full disk image every night, and have used it to clone disks successfully before. Very nice of you to take the time to add all that info though.
 
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USAFRet

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MrYossu said:
I'm with you most of the way. I'm just unsure about installing Win11.

To be clear, I want a completely fresh install of Win11, not an upgrade, as my current Win10 installation is flaky. I want a fresh start.
Click to expand...
Given that....

You probably want a fresh install of both.

Fresh install of Win 10 on the 840, with only the 840 connected.
Then, a fresh install of Win 11, with only the Corsair connected.

Or, the clone thing as above.


But either way, during the install of Win 11, you have only the Corsair connected.
 
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MrYossu

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USAFRet said:
Given that....

You probably want a fresh install of both.
Click to expand...

Nope, I want to keep my current installation of Win10 until I am happy that I've got all my data, settings, etc transferred to Win11. Then I intend to remove the Win10 drive and continue with just Win11.

Not sure that makes a huge difference, as instead of installing Win10 on the 840, I would clone it from the Corsair, but wanted to be clear.

USAFRet said:
Fresh install of Win 10 on the 840, with only the 840 connected.
Then, a fresh install of Win 11, with only the Corsair connected.

Or, the clone thing as above.

But either way, during the install of Win 11, you have only the Corsair connected.
Click to expand...
Right, here's where you lost me. Whilst playing around last night, I removed the Corsair and plugged in the 840. I booted into a Win11 installation USB, and chose to delete all the partitions on the 840. I then installed Win11 successfully.

I then powered down, plugged the Corsair back in (so I now had both drives in) and rebooted. It went straight into Win10, and didn't give me the option to choose which drive to boot from.

Based on that experience, I would expect that if I followed your instructions, then when I tried to boot with both drives plugged in, it would do the same, ie boot from one and ignore the other.

Please can you explain. Thanks again.
 
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USAFRet

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Right.
With an OS installed on each drive individually, you have to interrupt the boot process to choose which one to boot into.

Basically, stop the process before it gets to Windows, and you'll be able to select which drive.

Turn FastBoot off.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Or.....

Clone the Win 10 to the 840.
Remove the 840
Fresh install of Win 11 to the Corsair...full wipe and install

Install all your drivers and applications

Leave the 840 disconnected in a desk drawer, and revel in the full functionality and minimal differences of 11 vs 10.
 
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MrYossu

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@
USAFRet said:
Or.....

Clone the Win 10 to the 840.
Remove the 840
Fresh install of Win 11 to the Corsair...full wipe and install

Install all your drivers and applications

Leave the 840 disconnected in a desk drawer, and revel in the full functionality and minimal differences of 11 vs 10.
Click to expand...
Hee hee, that's my (hopefully not-too) long-term plan, but in the short term, I need my Win10 installation available, as experience has shown me that however careful I am, I always forget something and need to be able to go back to the old installation to pick up a setting, etc.

So are you saying that all I need to do is disable fast startup, and then when I boot up with both drives plugged in, it will ask me which I want to boot from?

If so then that's much easier than I anticipated!

Thanks again. Please can you confirm I understood you.
 
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MrYossu

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USAFRet said:
Not "will ask".
Rather...you DO have to press whatever key is relevant on your motherboard to interrupt the boot process.
F12 or ESC, for instance.

Turning fast boot off gives you the opportunity to do that.
Click to expand...
Ah, missed the words "have to" in your post!

Do you know how I'd find out what the key is? Don't remember seeing it on the boot screen. I have an Aorus X570 Elite. I looked in the manual, and did some searching, but couldn't find anything useful.

Thanks again.
 
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MrYossu

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USAFRet said:
On pg 25, it shows F12 as the one for accessing the boot menu.
DEL to get into the actual BIOS.
Click to expand...
Duh, so I went to bed too late last night, what can I say! Shows how you can missing things by doing a text search😁

Just waiting for the clone to finish, then will give all this a go. You can relax for a bit, the clone is taking a while, so I won't be drving you mad until that's done!

Thanks again.
 
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MrYossu

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@USAFRet Thank you again for all your help! I now have a dual boot PC where both my original Win10 installation (on the 840) and a brand new Win11 installation (on the Corsair) work fine.

All I need to do now is install my programs in Win11 and copy over my data, but that's the easy bit.

Thanks again for your amazing help.
 
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