Question How do I replace an M.2 boot drive on a single M.2 Motherboard and retain the info of the old M.2 drive?

tomseurocat

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I finally have run out of space on my OS boot 250 GB M.2 boot drive. I only have the single M.2 port on my Motherboard and need to have the programs and such on the new 1TB M.2 OS boot drive. I already have my big games and the user folder on different drives, so that really isn't an issue. It's just getting the new M.2 drive installed and running with the current programs installed. I also purchased an M.2 PCIe replacement adapter so that I can utilize the old M.2 as a drive that I can still record stuff to. What is the best way to go about the replacement?
 

tomseurocat

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Do you have another drive...internal or external, with sufficient space to hold the entirety of your current C drive?

What size/make/model are these drives?
Desktop or laptop?
Yes I do have other drives connected, several. One of them is a Sandisk Ultra 2 480 GB SSD that has sufficient space on it.
I would only assume that I need to disconnect my other drives, copy that Current C drive to the Sandisk SSD and do a clean install of Windows on the new M.2?

I have a desktop.
 
Take an image of the existing drive (via Macrium Reflect, Acronis True Image, or Rescuezilla), stored to an external USB drive (who doesn't have at least one these days?)

Restore the image to the newly installed larger NVME drive

(Should be able to expand the partition in Admin Tools/DIsk Mngmt to encompass the available larger space.)
 

USAFRet

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Yes I do have other drives connected, several. One of them is a Sandisk Ultra 2 480 GB SSD that has sufficient space on it.
I would only assume that I need to disconnect my other drives, copy that Current C drive to the Sandisk SSD and do a clean install of Windows on the new M.2?

I have a desktop.
1x m.2 slot with an Image

Assuming you have another drive with sufficient free space to hold the entirety of your current m.2 drive:

  1. Download and install Macrium Reflect
  2. Run that, and create a Rescue CD or USB (you'll use this later). "Other Tasks"
  3. In the Macrium client, create an Image to some other drive. External USB HDD, maybe. Select all partitions. This results in a file of xxxx.mrimage
  4. When done, power OFF.
  5. Swap the 2 drives. Old M.2 out, new M.2 in.
  6. Boot up from the Rescue USB you created earlier.
  7. Recover, and tell it where the Image is that you created in step 3, and which drive to apply it to...the new m.2
  8. Go, and wait until it finishes.
  9. That's all...this should work.
 
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tomseurocat

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1x m.2 slot with an Image

Assuming you have another drive with sufficient free space to hold the entirety of your current m.2 drive:

  1. Download and install Macrium Reflect
  2. Run that, and create a Rescue CD or USB (you'll use this later). "Other Tasks"
  3. In the Macrium client, create an Image to some other drive. External USB HDD, maybe. Select all partitions. This results in a file of xxxx.mrimage
  4. When done, power OFF.
  5. Swap the 2 drives. Old M.2 out, new M.2 in.
  6. Boot up from the Rescue USB you created earlier.
  7. Recover, and tell it where the Image is that you created in step 3, and which drive to apply it to...the new m.2
  8. Go, and wait until it finishes.
  9. That's all...this should work.
Running into a snag. When I get to step 6, the pc reads the USB and starts to boot off of it, but then I get the error that "An unknown error has occurred and your PC needs to be restarted. We will restart for you."
Then when it starts back up it reads the USB but it goes to a solid color, like it's being used, and the screen on the monitor remains black.
It never boots back so that I can go on to step 7.
 

tomseurocat

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I am now on my third USB flash drive and finally got it to boot into the reflect program. I click on deploy to new hardware at the top and it wants me to purchase a license for the software package.
 

tomseurocat

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OK, I was able to get the image onto the new M.2 and went into the bios to make sure the boot drive was now the new M.2, every thing looks right. However, my pc is freezing on the BIOS screen that says MSI Gaming Plus. The little circle that indicates that the PC is in the start up sequence freezes and everything stops.

I change the M.2 back to my old samsung stick and everything is as it was. I don't understand where I might be making a mistake.
 

tomseurocat

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Still nothing!! I tried using the Acronis software for crucial since the new M.2 is a crucial drive. It pops a repair error screen in which error 0xc000000e comes up.
I've tried downloading a Windows 10 installation USB from the Microsoft website and it wants to install MS office on my laptop. I can't even create a boot USB now and I don't understand why not.
 

tomseurocat

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No success in repairing my old M.2. I may be at the point that I just need to reinstall a fresh Windows on the new M.2 and go from there. I can try to get the programs and such off my old M.2 later. I have most of the programs saved on other drives, just not at the same evolution as on my old M.2.
Unless you have any other ideas?
 

tomseurocat

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I don't understand that either since everything is as it was before I started this process. I now boot up and the pc goes into recovery mode and I get the error:
"Your PC needs to be repaired
A required divice isn't connected or cant be accessed
Error code 0xc000000e
You'll need to use recovery tools and so on......................