[SOLVED] procedure for transferring disc contents to new hard drive

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soureel

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Jan 20, 2014
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I've purchased a new hard drive (Samsung EV0 980) and need to transfer the contents of my current hard disc to the new one. I do not have a second drive bay and would like to use my USB external hard drive to accomplish this.

It's my understanding that what I want to do is to clone my main SSD (disc 0) to a USB hard drive (disc 1), then boot to the USB drive and clone the contents to my new SSD. I've purchased AOMEI BackUpper and I'm having some issues. Using Backupper, I cloned the entire contents of Disc 0 to Disc 1.

When I restart my computer (Dell Inspiron 7506) and select the USB drive to boot from, it will boot to Windows but only if the original SSD (Disc 0) is in the computer. It will not boot up if I've replaced the old hard drive with the new one. Does this cloned disc (1) include boot manager files, or do I need to first create a copy of Windows PE on Disc 1 (or do I create a boot disc on a different USB device?)

I'm confused about what to do and any guidance would be appreciated.
 
Solution
USAFRet
soureel said:
"recover"- is that part of the BIOS, or Macrum ( and does it automatically start)?
Click to expand...
Macrium, and it does NOT automatically start.

Boot from the Mac RescueUSB, its on the toolbar at the top.
Actually, it says "Restore" - "Browse for an Image or Backup file to restore..."
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I assume the "current hard disc" contains Windows and is your boot drive.

There 2 methods to transfer to a new drive.

Cloning; this is a 1 step process that transfers the contents directly.

Imaging; this is a 2 step process in which you first make an image of the old drive, saving that image on some other drive, probably external. The second step would be to restore that image on the external to the new drive.

From your description, it seems like you wanted to clone, but also wanted to involve some other drive (your USB drive 1). That's what you'd do for imaging, but not cloning. A clone transfers the system old drive to new drive WITHOUT use of any interim drive.
 
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Your best bet would be to move all of your personal data off to the USB. Take a screenshot of your installed programs such as in Control Panel and save that.

Do a clean install of OS to the new drive and then utilize the USB backup to transfer in all the files and such that you have there.
 
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soureel said:
I've purchased a new hard drive (Samsung EV0 980) and need to transfer the contents of my current hard disc to the new one. I do not have a second drive bay and would like to use my USB external hard drive to accomplish this.

It's my understanding that what I want to do is to clone my main SSD (disc 0) to a USB hard drive (disc 1), then boot to the USB drive and clone the contents to my new SSD. I've purchased AOMEI BackUpper and I'm having some issues. Using Backupper, I cloned the entire contents of Disc 0 to Disc 1.

When I restart my computer (Dell Inspiron 7506) and select the USB drive to boot from, it will boot to Windows but only if the original SSD (Disc 0) is in the computer. It will not boot up if I've replaced the old hard drive with the new one. Does this cloned disc (1) include boot manager files, or do I need to first create a copy of Windows PE on Disc 1 (or do I create a boot disc on a different USB device?)

I'm confused about what to do and any guidance would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Get a usb to m.2 enclosure.
Put the 980 in the enclosure and connect it via usb.
Clone internal ssd to the 980.
Remove internal ssd and install the 980.
See if it will boot.
 
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Dell Inspiron 7506 n21 laptop, Windows 11
Currrent drive: Kioxia 512gb NVMe M.2 SSD drive (approx. 190gb free).
USB drive WD Passport 512gb HDD USB2.0.
Replacement drive: Samsung EVO 980 NVMe M.2 1tb SSD drive.
 
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soureel said:
Dell Inspiron 7506 n21 laptop, Windows 11
Currrent drive: Kioxia 512gb NVMe M.2 SSD drive (approx. 190gb free).
USB drive WD Passport 512gb HDD USB2.0.
Replacement drive: Samsung EVO 980 NVMe M.2 1tb SSD drive.
Click to expand...
And just 1x M.2 port on the motherboard?
No problem...

You will also need a small, blank flash drive as well.

Writing an Image, instead of a direct clone.

--------------------------
  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. Thisis your WD Passport. Select all partitions. This results in a file of xxxx.mrimage
  4. When done, power OFF.
  5. Swap the 2 drives
  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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soureel said:
Dell Inspiron 7506 n21 laptop, Windows 11
Currrent drive: Kioxia 512gb NVMe M.2 SSD drive (approx. 190gb free).
USB drive WD Passport 512gb HDD USB2.0.
Replacement drive: Samsung EVO 980 NVMe M.2 1tb SSD drive.
Click to expand...

An image file of the current Kioxia will be roughly 200 GB in size.

If you have that much free space on the WD Passport external, you can use imaging. If not....................you have to do something else.
 
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If you have that much free space on the Passport, you can just:

Install the new drive.

Install Macrium on current drive.

Open Macrium and make an image file of ALL partitions on the current drive. A "full" image.

Accept whatever defaults Macrium offers. You will need to choose a destination drive (the Passport).

Save that image on the Passport. Might take a half hour?

Confirm that you can see it in File Explorer on the Passport. It should have an .mrimg extension and be somewhere near 200 GB in size.

Go back to Macrium interface and look for "restore" in the menus.

Select the image file you just made.

Direct the restoration to the new drive.

You shouldn't need to make a bootable USB drive to boot from UNLESS your current C drive won't boot............BUT it is a good idea to make one anyway because you may need to restore sometime when your current C drive is unbootable for whatever reason.
 
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Lafong said:
You shouldn't need to make a bootable USB drive to boot from UNLESS your current C drive won't boot............BUT it is a good idea to make one anyway because you may need to restore sometime when your current C drive is unbootable for whatever reason.
Click to expand...
His system only has 1x M.2 port.
Remove the original M.2 drive...nothing to boot from except the Macrium Rescue USB.
 
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USAFRet said:
His system only has 1x M.2 port.
Remove the original M.2 drive...nothing to boot from except the Macrium Rescue USB.
Click to expand...

Aye aye. Didn't catch that.

Confirm the USB rescue drive will in fact boot the PC before removing the original drive. Use the boot menu to select the USB drive. It will react slowly due to being USB, not hard drive. You will be presented with the same interface you would see if you ran Macrium from the hard drive.
 
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Lafong said:
Aye aye. Didn't catch that.

Confirm the USB rescue drive will in fact boot the PC before removing the original drive. Use the boot menu to select the USB drive. It will react slowly due to being USB, not hard drive. You will be presented with the same interface you would see if you ran Macrium from the hard drive.
Click to expand...
If there were 2x relevant M.2 ports, we could just do a straight clone from A to B.
Since there isn't, an intermediate Image is the solution.
 
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Thanks for all the responses. Since I had already installed AOMEI BackUpper and had already created an image using that software, I decided to try that route first. So I made an emergency boot disk on a USB flash drive. Then the following steps:
1.Turn computer off. Swap out original SSD and Install new EVO 980
2.Reboot computer to drive with emergency boot.
3.Open Backupper, Selected image I had backed up on the WD Passport.
4.Next screen, select location where backup is to be restored to.
5.PRoblem! The EVO 980 is not displayed

I started to redo the whole backup using Macrum which I've downloaded. But I wonder if I'll run into the same problem. Does the EVO 980 need to be formatted first for it to be recognized? If so how do I do that without the Windows operating system. Recall that I only have one SSD drive bay in my laptop. There is an option to go to Windows command prompt in Backupper, but I wouldn't know what commands to type in, even if this is a viable option.
 
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soureel said:
I started to redo the whole backup using Macrum which I've downloaded. But I wonder if I'll run into the same problem. Does the EVO 980 need to be formatted first for it to be recognized? If so how do I do that without the Windows operating system. Recall that I only have one SSD drive bay in my laptop. There is an option to go to Windows command prompt in Backupper, but I wouldn't know what commands to type in, even if this is a viable option.
Click to expand...
No it does not.
Macrium will write that Image out to a brand new blank drive.

My steps in #11 above will work.
 
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Be sure to choose the right partitions when you make the Macrium image.

You can accept defaults on most choices.

Main thing is to choose the right partitions and destination for the image.

No more than maybe 6 or 8 mouse clicks.

Can you see the new drive in the BIOS?
 
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