Transfer OS between two SSDs for notebook with only one SSD port?

[Crazydre]

So I've bought a Notebook with an 128GB SSD with Win10, but will use a 1TB SSD I've bought instead

How do I Transfer the OS to the 1TB drive (to avoid having to buy a new OS)? The Notebook has only one SSD port (for M.2. SSDs, which is why both the original and replacement model are M.2. SSDs), so I can't insert both at the same time

 

[ArtPog]

So you could connect the 1 TB SSD to your laptop via a USB port and using the 1 TB SSD as an external USB HDD you could use a data migration program to clone the contents of the laptop's current boot drive to that USB-connected HDD. So after doing that you could install the cloned drive in the laptop to replace the current boot drive.

You might want to peruse Google for detailed info on "data migration programs".

 

[Crazydre]

"So you could connect the 1 TB SSD to your laptop via a USB port"

How am I supposed to put an M.2. SSD into a USB port?

 

[ArtPog]

(I thought I had posted this response but I don't see it. So...)

My apologies. I failed to realize your destination drive would be a M.2 SSD.

I've no experience with this type of situation so I'm at a loss as to what help I can provide you.
What comes to mind is installing the M.2 SSD internally in the laptop and connecting the current boot drive as a USB external device then carrying out the disk-cloning operation (in reverse so to speak). But the problem here is that in virtually every case the USB-connected drive is not a bootable device.

Now a number of disk-cloning programs do provide a capability for creating a bootable CD containing their disk-cloning program and that could be a possibility.

My final thought is that since your source disk is only 128 GB and obviously doesn't contain a huge volume of programs & other data, what about simply fresh installing the OS onto the M.2 SSD and then installing whatever programs you want on that drive together with copying whatever data you need from the 128 GB SSD?

Perhaps other posters coming upon this thread can provide a more practical solution.