Question Installing new NVMe SSD and moving data from secondary NVMe SSD ?

[sirnacho]

Hi all,
I had a question, I currently have 2 NVME SSD's in my system; 1 - 1tb and 1 - 250GB. (2nd slot)
I have just purchased a new 2tb NVME SSD as I need more storage and want to move over all the data from the 250gb to the 1tb SSD and then move the 1tb SSD to the 2nd slot, and finally make the 2tb SSD my new main drive for some games and my OS.
however I am unsure how to go about this process without losing data and making sure nothing happens to the drives.

thanks in advance.

 

[Lafong]

You now have a 250 gb and a 1 tb.

What is on each of them?

Which of the 2 currently contains your OS and installed applications?

What is on the other?

What motherboard?

Brand and model of the drives?

You should be able to do this with either imaging or cloning, but more details needed.

 

[sirnacho]

Its mostly games on both
the 1tb currently has the Windows OS but I would like to put in on the new 2tb SSD
as for the motherboard is is a ASUS Strix B550-A

 

[dwd999]

Hi all,
I had a question, I currently have 2 NVME SSD's in my system; 1 - 1tb and 1 - 250GB. (2nd slot)
I have just purchased a new 2tb NVME SSD as I need more storage and want to over all the data from the 250gb to the 1tb SSD and then move the 1tb SSD to the 2nd slot, and finally make the 2tb SSD my new main drive for some games and my OS.
however I am unsure how to go about this process without losing data and making sure nothing happens to the drives.

thanks in advance.

First and most important I would recommend using a program like Macrium to clone the OS drive onto the new drive so that you're sure the OS is preserved. You'll get a prompt during the process to expand the OS partitions. Then if the remainder is just data files you can copy the folders over to whatever drive you want them to be on. Just make sure you can properly boot and run the OS with just that new drive connected. After that its just plain file copying.

 

[hotaru.hino]

There's two ways to go about this:

• Use Windows' system image tool (https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-back-up-and-restore-an-image-file-of-windows-10)
• Clone the SSD. The manufacturer of the destination drive may have a tool already to do this with. So if you got a Samsung SSD, use their Data Migration tool.

If you have games on the "wrong" SSD that you want to move to the 2TB one afterwards, most store fronts will let you move the library over or the specific game over. Worst comes to worse, you can actually copy and paste the game files to where you want them to live and have the store front "install" it there. The store front will usually figure out the files are there and do a verification check before marking it as installed.

 

[Moonstick2]

You're starting out with:

1TB: OS + games (I)
250GB: data + games (II)

and you want to end up with:
2TB: (I)
1TB: (II)

(You haven't said, but the assumption is that you don't have room to move (II) onto the 1TB drive.)

First thing's first, you should have some kind of external backup for your data, stuff you don't want to lose. You should have this anyway, you really should.

Next you need some software that can perform cloning and imaging of disks, e.g. Macrium Reflect.

Ideally you need some external drive with at least 256GB free. If you do, the sequence is this:
1) Copy all of (II) to external drive.
2) Remove 250 GB drive and install 2TB drive.
3) Clone (I) to 2TB drive.
4) Remove 1TB drive, move 2TB if desired.
5) Check PC boots from 2TB drive.
6) Reinstall 250GB drive. Reboot and check the system behaves itself. The longer you can do this (e.g. over days) the better.
7) Remove 250 GB drive, reformatting it first if planning to sell.
8) Install 1TB drive and reformat it.
9) Copy all of (II) from the external drive to 1TB drive.

If you don't have an external drive it's more fiddly, but you still should have your data backed up to the cloud. If you've no data backup at all, go and buy an external drive unless you really have nothing you don't mind losing forever.

Without an external drive:
1) Remove 250 GB drive and install 2TB drive.
2) Clone (I) to 2TB drive.
3) Remove 1TB drive, move 2TB if desired.
4) Check PC boots with 2TB drive.
5) Reinstall 250GB drive. Reboot and check the system behaves itself. The longer you can do this (e.g. over days) the better.
6) Copy all of (II) to the 2TB drive.
7) Remove the 250GB drive, reformatting it first if planning to sell.
8) Install the 1TB drive, reformat the 1TB drive.
9) Move all of (II) to 1TB drive.

When you reinstall the 250GB/1TB drives you may need to set the drive letters in Disk Management to get everything to work correctly. It's very important to boot from the 2TB drive without any other drives installed first though.

 

[Bob.B]

Hi all,
I had a question, I currently have 2 NVME SSD's in my system; 1 - 1tb and 1 - 250GB. (2nd slot)
I have just purchased a new 2tb NVME SSD as I need more storage and want to move over all the data from the 250gb to the 1tb SSD and then move the 1tb SSD to the 2nd slot, and finally make the 2tb SSD my new main drive for some games and my OS.
however I am unsure how to go about this process without losing data and making sure nothing happens to the drives.

thanks in advance.

Consider using the 1TB for the OS and apps and the 2TB for games and other storage.

 

[Cellie]

There's a third option for cloning: dd from a live ubuntu on a pendrive. You got to be very careful and triple-check everything to not mess it up though, and depending on what and where you're cloning that into you may need to fix the boot afterwards.

 

[USAFRet]

Hi all,
I had a question, I currently have 2 NVME SSD's in my system; 1 - 1tb and 1 - 250GB. (2nd slot)
I have just purchased a new 2tb NVME SSD as I need more storage and want to move over all the data from the 250gb to the 1tb SSD and then move the 1tb SSD to the 2nd slot, and finally make the 2tb SSD my new main drive for some games and my OS.
however I am unsure how to go about this process without losing data and making sure nothing happens to the drives.

thanks in advance.

What specific drives?
What motherboard?

Which drive is the OS on currently?

A screencap of your Disk Management window would help here.