[SOLVED] SSD Switch/Upgrade for Lenovo Yoga 730

Zorozephyr09

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Mar 24, 2019
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Hi, so I recently got a 1TB SSD from Crucial that will be a replacement for my laptop’s current 256GB SSD (big upgrade, ik). The laptop is a Lenovo Yoga 730 13-inch and both the current and replacement SSDs are M.2 nvme’s. Now, because the Yoga 730 13” only has one slot for an SSD, I was just wondering what the best way was for me to easily and successfully transfer all of the data and the operating system from my current 128GB SSD to the new drive. I've never done anything like this for a laptop, so I wanted check with others before doing anything I might later regret. I did some researching and read about cloning, and that sounds like it may be the most simple way for me to safely get all of my stuff onto the new SSD and having my laptop work just like it did before; I’m mostly unsure about how to deal with moving the laptop’s windows 10 operating system to the new drive. I also have a 2TB external hard drive ready for use if I need a back up, though I don’t know how to even get my current os (if it’s even at all possible) backed up to that external drive. Any help with this would be very much appreciated. Also, if cloning is what I should do, where can I go to get a free and secure cloning program to begin the process? Thanks!

P.S. I posted the same thing to Lenovo support forums to get opinions from their as well, waiting to hear back from both there and here.
 
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Solution
Yes, migration == cloning (mostly).

------------------------------------
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
  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...
if I were you, I wouldn't try moving the os to the new drives
just put all the stuff you need from that 128gb ssd to the external drive and put a new os on the new 1 tb drive
then just drag and drop the rest

yeah youll need to install all your programs but its an ssd so It should be fast

also, even if your old 128gb drive is full, 128gb wont take that long to take with a hard drive.
 

Zorozephyr09

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Mar 24, 2019
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if I were you, I wouldn't try moving the os to the new drives
just put all the stuff you need from that 128gb ssd to the external drive and put a new os on the new 1 tb drive
then just drag and drop the rest

yeah youll need to install all your programs but its an ssd so It should be fast

also, even if your old 128gb drive is full, 128gb wont take that long to take with a hard drive.

If I were to do this, how would I put the os on the new SSD? Do you mean like install a separate copy of windows 10 onto the new SSD? Because I think that would mean I would have to buy another copy of Windows 10 just to do that. Would it not be easier for me to perform a drive clone of some sort?
 

Zorozephyr09

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Mar 24, 2019
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if I were you, I wouldn't try moving the os to the new drives
just put all the stuff you need from that 128gb ssd to the external drive and put a new os on the new 1 tb drive
then just drag and drop the rest

yeah youll need to install all your programs but its an ssd so It should be fast

also, even if your old 128gb drive is full, 128gb wont take that long to take with a hard drive.

I just don't want to have to reinstall anything as its more the chance of overlooking or incorrectly reinstalling a program rather than time that I'm concerned about going down that route.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
If you have an external drive of sufficient size to hold the entirety of your current C drive, you can probably migrate from old to new.
Do you have such a drive?


Or, a clean install on the new drive.
No purchase of Windows necessary.

We can explore either option.
 

Zorozephyr09

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Mar 24, 2019
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If you have an external drive of sufficient size to hold the entirety of your current C drive, you can probably migrate from old to new.
Do you have such a drive?


Or, a clean install on the new drive.
No purchase of Windows necessary.

We can explore either option.

I do have a sufficiently sized external hard drive, yes, and besides the operating system (which I do not know how to back up to the drive), I believe I already have a back up of my laptop's data on it. When you say migration does that mean the same thing as drive cloning? Because from what I've found online that appears to be the most plausible way for me to get everything on my current drive, including the os, to the new 1TB SSD. The external hard drive has 2TB of storage and my the current SSD in my laptop is only a 256GB.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Yes, migration == cloning (mostly).

------------------------------------
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
  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.
 
Solution

Zorozephyr09

Prominent
Mar 24, 2019
67
1
535
Yes, migration == cloning (mostly).

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

Ok, so a couple questions about the steps here; for the rescue CD/USB, what is that exactly? And how big should it be (what will I be storing on it for the procedure)? I've never made anything like that before, so I'm not sure what to do about that. For #6, how exactly do I go about booting up my laptop from the Rescue USB after swapping the two drives? As in is there any specific process I should follow to ensure I correctly start my laptop up from the new SSD? And finally, after I've done steps 1-9, should I expect to see things on my laptop in the exact same place they were before the drive swap, including seeing the same desktop arrangement (same wallpaper, icons, saved programs to taskbar, etc.)? Also thanks a bunch in advance for the help so far; I really appreciate it.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
The Rescue USB is a minimal boot device, used to run the Macrium recovery function.
After swapping your physical M.2 drives, the system should boot from that USB flash drive.

I think any 4GB or 8GB flash drive would work.

The procedures to create it are outlined in the Macrium client.


If this all works, and it should, everything should be exactly how it was on the old drive.
You may have to manage partition sizes. The new drive may have a large unallocated space.
But we'll fix that if/when that happens after the migration.
 

Zorozephyr09

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Mar 24, 2019
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The Rescue USB is a minimal boot device, used to run the Macrium recovery function.
After swapping your physical M.2 drives, the system should boot from that USB flash drive.

I think any 4GB or 8GB flash drive would work.

The procedures to create it are outlined in the Macrium client.


If this all works, and it should, everything should be exactly how it was on the old drive.
You may have to manage partition sizes. The new drive may have a large unallocated space.
But we'll fix that if/when that happens after the migration.

Ok, thanks for the clarification. Sorry in advance but I have a few more questions; first for the boot flash drive, I have an 8GB Sandisk ready for use, but its not completely empty (has some music and files from school on it). Is that ok? Second, for the backup, I read about a backup feature provided by Windows thats in the control panel called "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)". Would it be helpful at all to also have a backup of my SSD through that tool as well, or would it be pointless as the backup would be going on the same external hard drive I would be using for the macrium program? A video I watched on it showed that it works for systems running non-Windows 7 os's, not just Windows 7 as indicated in the feature's name.
 

Zorozephyr09

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Mar 24, 2019
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The Rescue USB is a minimal boot device, used to run the Macrium recovery function.
After swapping your physical M.2 drives, the system should boot from that USB flash drive.

I think any 4GB or 8GB flash drive would work.

The procedures to create it are outlined in the Macrium client.


If this all works, and it should, everything should be exactly how it was on the old drive.
You may have to manage partition sizes. The new drive may have a large unallocated space.
But we'll fix that if/when that happens after the migration.

I'm also backing up my laptop right now onto the external WD drive to make sure it's as updated as possible.
Also, a sort of unrelated question: after each backup I've done onto my WD hard drive, there's always been several files that fail to be backed up. They're all file names I've never seen before, however I just wanted check with you to see if you knew in case it is something I should be concerned about at all; some of the names include defaultuser.dat. Most are 0 bytes in size however one is 64 bytes, but its name is just a line of random letters and numbers.
 
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USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
That flash drive needs to be actually empty. Or at least data you no longer need.
Copy that music and school data off to somewhere else.

The Backup and Restore thing in Windows?
You can if you want. I wouldn't.
Your original drive is untouched during this, so you can always go back.

And you'll already have 2 instances of your current drive....as it is now on the physical drive, and the Macrium Image.
 

Zorozephyr09

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That flash drive needs to be actually empty. Or at least data you no longer need.
Copy that music and school data off to somewhere else.

The Backup and Restore thing in Windows?
You can if you want. I wouldn't.
Your original drive is untouched during this, so you can always go back.

And you'll already have 2 instances of your current drive....as it is now on the physical drive, and the Macrium Image.

Ok, thanks again. I'll either offload the files on this current flash drive or just get one thats larger as I would like to have another separate flash drive that isn't dedicated as a recovery drive. Thanks for the help thus far again. I'll get back to you once I have installed Macrium and created a system image for my laptop.
 

Zorozephyr09

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Mar 24, 2019
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That flash drive needs to be actually empty. Or at least data you no longer need.
Copy that music and school data off to somewhere else.

The Backup and Restore thing in Windows?
You can if you want. I wouldn't.
Your original drive is untouched during this, so you can always go back.

And you'll already have 2 instances of your current drive....as it is now on the physical drive, and the Macrium Image.

Hey USAFVet, so I got the Reflect software installed and have an empty usb device connected to be made into the rescue drive, I just had a question about an option the software is giving me before making the rescue flash drive; in the window where I select the drive to be my rescue media, I have checkbox option for "check for devices missing drivers on boot" that was not checked already when the window first came up. Is that something I should have enabled? Or does it not do anything/matter? Thanks
 

Zorozephyr09

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Hey USAFVet, sorry but I have another question regarding the Macrium image creation process; when I select the "image this disk" option in the macrium program, the first window asks me to specify a location for the image to go. Now I want the image of my current SSD to go onto my easystore external hard drive, but I wasn't sure whether there was a specific folder within my external drive that I needed to select as the destination for the image; for right now I just made a separate folder within the external hard drive that I plan to use as the location for the image. Just wanted to see whether that is the right way to go for this step in the process. My second question is about the next page of the imaging execution window; the next window that appears after I set the image destination shows a 3-step configuration and is titled "Edit the Plan for This Backup" and the first two options asks about whether to have a full, differential, or incremental schedule setting for the image/backup. The last section labeled "Define Retention Rules", gives the option of again setting either full, differential, or incremental backups, along with options for "keeping" a certain number of backups, days, or weeks. Lastly, the bottom part of this window gives some checkbox options like "run the purge before backup" and "purge the oldest backup set(s) if less than [provide a #] GB on the target volume (minimum 1GB)". As I am very unfamiliar with Macrium Reflect, I am not sure how to proceed with the imaging and whether I need to be choosing certain options over others. Apologies once again for the long and detailed questions, I hope I'm not tiring you out too badly. Thanks
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
It can be anywhere on that drive...any folder.
It will result in a file named "FFF98B7DCC51832F-00-00.mrimg" or similar.
(that is the full drive image from my current C drive, created this morning at 00:01, as part of my automated backup routine)

You can ignore/deselect ALL of the Keep/Differential/Incremental/Purge options. You're just creating a single Image here.
Those other options are for an automated backup schedule.
 

Zorozephyr09

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"Select a template" = "None"
"Define Retention Rules" = ignore that
"Purge the oldest backup set(s).." = Ignore that
Click Next
Click Finish
"Save backup and schedules as...." = Unchecked

Run this backup now = Checked.
Click OK.

Awesome, thanks so much USAFvet! I have proceeded with the image backup with the parameters you gave me and it is currently running creating the image onto my external hard drive. I'll come back and update you once that's finished. Once this is done I can begin switching out the physical SSDs, correct?
 

Zorozephyr09

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If you've also made the Rescue USB, and verified it actually works, yes...proceed to swap the physical M.2 drives.

How would I test the rescue USB to make sure it works? When I click on the drive in my file explorer when its conected I can see that there are new files named Boot, Drivers, EFI, etc. Is that sufficient?
 

Zorozephyr09

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Mar 24, 2019
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If you've also made the Rescue USB, and verified it actually works, yes...proceed to swap the physical M.2 drives.

One other thing; when I'm accessing my external harddrive manually from file explorer, the size of the macrium image file on it only appears as 100GB. Does this make sense, considering the amount of space I have currently taken up on my 256 GB SSD is around 164GB? Thanks
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Yes.
The Image does a little bit of compression, and leaves off a lot of things that are not needed.
Pagefile, hibernation file, some/all temp files.

My current C drive is a 500GB SSD.
Currently, 270GB consumed space according to File Explorer.
A Macrium Full image made last night (midnight) is approx 160GB.
 

Zorozephyr09

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Mar 24, 2019
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Yes.
The Image does a little bit of compression, and leaves off a lot of things that are not needed.
Pagefile, hibernation file, some/all temp files.

My current C drive is a 500GB SSD.
Currently, 270GB consumed space according to File Explorer.
A Macrium Full image made last night (midnight) is approx 160GB.

Ok, thanks for that info. About the USB rescue drive again, how should I test whether or not it works? Thanks!