Question Clone Win7 to 970 Evo M2 NVME

[madman12]

I'm looking to upgrade to Win10 soon, win7 -> win10 rather than clean install of win10 preferably. In preparation for that picked up a 2tb 970 evo plus M2 NVME.

Installed it (z270, msi m6 ac. ), can see it in disk management. Cloned my SSD with Win7 to the 970 and tried to boot from it, only 970 connected, and errored with "reboot and select proper boot device". In Bios, I can see the 970 come up as a boot device (not uefi if that matters) so it seems to have picked it up. Can see and access 970 as normal from within Windows when booting from my SSD.

I've googled around and not really found anything that seems to relate directly. Alot of it is based more on trying clean installs of Win7 and it not having the drivers for nvme drives however I dont believe that is the issue here, Not sure what the issue is, would prefer to get the 970 working so if anything goes wrong with the win10 upgrade I have the ssd to fall back on as far as not losing anything.

 

[USAFRet]

Win 7 did not have the drivers for that SSD. You'll need to install them manually.

What tool did you use for this clone operation?
For a 970 EVO, use Samsung Data Migration.

What other drives are in this system?

-----------------------------
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.
-----------------------------

 

[madman12]

Macrium Reflect was the tool.

Only other storage device is my 1 GB SSD driver.

I didn't specifically install Samsung specific NVME driver when cloning, on install it did pick up a standard nvme driver.

Slight clarification:

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.

I'm assuming above is more for it you have multiple storage drives to ensure your C drive is your boot drive?

I'll look to grab the SDM now I've got Samsungs driver installed and clone again. See how it goes.

 

[USAFRet]

I'm assuming above is more for it you have multiple storage drives to ensure your C drive is your boot drive?

And to verify the small boot partition does not reside on some other drive.