Question How to smoothly switch to another internal SSD ?

[mujmuj]

I have 2TB internal M.2 NVMe SSD and now the storage space is not enough, I want to switch to a 4TB one.

But my Windows and everything is on my current SSD. So I wonder how painstaking it will be to switch to another SSD.

How best smoothly can I switch to 4TB SSD?

Just remove current SSD, plug in new SSD, and reinstall Windows and reinstall programs and reinstall dropbox syncing from very scratch? That's the smoothest approach I can ever take?

 

[CountMike]

I have 2TB internal m.2 NVMe ssd. Now the storage space is not enough. I want to switch to 4TB internal m.2 NVMe ssd.

But my Windows and everything is in my current SSD. So I wonder how painstaking it will be to switch to another SSD.

How best smoothly can I switch to 4TB SSD?

Just remove current SSD, plug in new SSD, and reinstall Windows and reinstall programs and reinstall dropbox syncing from very scratch? That's the smoothest approach I can ever take?

That's longer way and last resort although not bad idea if you need fresh Windows install anyway.
Other way is to connect both drives at same time, if necessary old one using USB adapter and clone it to new drive.
Or my favorite but another disk with enough space is required. I use Macrium Reflect program to do full disk backup to another disk (can be USB too) and than use that programs "Rescue USB" to BOOT from and restore that image to new drive.

 

[USAFRet]

I have 2TB internal m.2 NVMe ssd. Now the storage space is not enough. I want to switch to 4TB internal m.2 NVMe ssd.

But my Windows and everything is in my current SSD. So I wonder how painstaking it will be to switch to another SSD.

How best smoothly can I switch to 4TB SSD?

Just remove current SSD, plug in new SSD, and reinstall Windows and reinstall programs and reinstall dropbox syncing from very scratch? That's the smoothest approach I can ever take?

Laptop or desktop?
Which OS?

 

[mujmuj]

Laptop or desktop?
Which OS?

Desktop. Windows 10.

 

[USAFRet]

Desktop. Windows 10.

What motherboard?

How many M.2 ports?

 

[The Paladin]

use a clone tool, if you only have one M.2 connection on the mainboard get an external USB assembly M.2 device. and use it with a clone tool I upgraded from 1TB drive partitions to a 2TB drive, and basically cloned the old drive on 1TB partitions and made a second partition 1TB so I could move all my data from C: to D:
Also in your case 2TB to 4TB you can easily do that or clone the partitions to 2TB partitions when cloned open windows admin hardware and goto drive management and simply " stretch " the 2Tb of cloned drive unto the formatted second partition making only the one 4TB partition.

 

[USAFRet]

Also in your case 2TB to 4TB you can easily do that or clone the partitions to 2TB partitions when cloned open windows admin hardware and goto drive management and simply " stretch " the 2Tb of cloned drive unto the formatted second partition making only the one 4TB partition.

With Macrium, you can do that directly in the clone process.
No need to fix it after.

Lets see what hardware they're working with.

 

[mujmuj]

What motherboard?

How many M.2 ports?

Thank you!

Motherboard: ROG Rampage VI Extreme Encore
(Its website says "Ready for the latest Intel® Core™ X-series processors to maximize connectivity and speed with up to four M.2 drives")
PCI-Express 3.0

Memory: DDR4

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER

CPU: Intel I9-10900X

 

[USAFRet]

So....

Your board supports PCIe 3.0 drives.
The Kingston you indicated in your other thread is a 4.0, and would only see 3.0 speed on that motherboard.


A couple of ways forward.

The absolute easiest would be to simply add another drive.
Either SATA III SSD or another PCIe 3.0 in the other M.2 port.
This would then be the D drive, where you can offload some of your personal data or games to.

Otherwise, you could clone from the 2TB so something larger.
Cloning is relatively easy, but it MUST be done properly. Detailed steps to follow, if you want to go down that road.

 

[mujmuj]

Thanks!

And actually I have the other computer which has PCI-Express 5 motherboard. I didn't know very well if there is such a compatibility issue so I originally didn't mention this.

The other computer has this:

Intel i9-12900KF
ASRock Z690 Phantom Gaming 4 (PCI-Express 5)
DDR 5 Memory 64GB
AMD Radeon RX 6500XT

(I read on Tom's hardware that this motherboard isn't good enough for my other components so I am thinking of buying something better, but not sure for now)

For this computer, what will be the best 4TB SSD? You said Kingston is bad (you appeared to suggest that "Kingston" itself is bad).

So....

Your board supports PCIe 3.0 drives.
The Kingston you indicated in your other thread is a 4.0, and would only see 3.0 speed on that motherboard.


A couple of ways forward.

The absolute easiest would be to simply add another drive.
Either SATA III SSD or another PCIe 3.0 in the other M.2 port.
This would then be the D drive, where you can offload some of your personal data or games to.

Otherwise, you could clone from the 2TB so something larger.
Cloning is relatively easy, but it MUST be done properly. Detyailed steps to follow, if you want to go down that road.

 

[USAFRet]

For this computer, what will be the best 4TB SSD? You said Kingston is bad (you appeared to suggest that "Kingston" itself is bad).

Samsung or Crucial would be the default suggestions.

Kingston is on my Do Not Buy list, primarily due to their parts switching shenanigans.
Send uber fast parts out for editorial review, then later, swap the controllers for cheapness. Resulting is slower performance than was was published.

A lot of companies swap components like that.
But responsible ones don't keep the exact same parts number...the purchaser never knows.


So will this 4TB PCIe 3.0 be an addition, or replacement of, the 2TB?

 

[mujmuj]

Samsung or Crucial would be the default suggestions.

Kingston is on my Do Not Buy list, primarily due to their parts switching shenanigans.
Send uber fast parts out for editorial review, then later, swap the controllers for cheapness. Resulting is slower performance than was was published.

A lot of companies swap components like that.
But responsible ones don't keep the exact same parts number...the purchaser never knows.


So will this 4TB PCIe 3.0 be an addition, or replacement of, the 2TB?

Can I use both my 4TB ssd and 2TB ssd as one C drive? If so, then it will be an addition, not a replacement.

I use dropbox on my PC. But I can't use dropbox across multiple drives (e.g., C and D drives) without weird errors. Also it's not possible to use multiple dropbox accounts on one computer.

So if both SSDs can be combined into one C drive, then that will be great and 4TB ssd will be an addition, not a replacement.