[SOLVED] Upgrading Primary SSD in Inspiron 7506 2n1 Laptop

[nekton]

I have an Dell Inspiron 7506 2n1 with an Intel Optane H10 512 GB SSD. I run Adobe, Office and VirtualBox with linux distro guests. I have run out of disk space and want to upgrade to 1TB of storage.

I had planned on buying a 1TB drive like the one in the link below and using Macrium software, clone the drive increase the C: partition to its maximum value.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K1J3C23/ref=ask_ql_qh_dp_hza?th=1

I am not really a hardware person but after some reading and checking BIOS of my laptop. I am now realizing this isn't as easy as it would be if I was upgrading a non-Optane drive because of the RAID 0 configuration Optane seems to use.

Am I better off in just getting the 1TB version of the above Optane drive or are there still a series of steps necessary to deal with upgrading a RAID 0 SSD?
Can I get away with upgrading without a lot of difficulty to a non-Optane drive like the one in the link from my Optane one? There is a significant price difference (nearly twice the amount!)

Any links or guidance is appreciated. Sorry for asking what are probably some pretty basic questions for hardware enthusiasts.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Considering that you have one physical M.2 slot for your SSD/storage options, the only option I see at this point is to backup any and/or all data off of your current SSD, then wipe the drive clean, drop in your SSD of choice into the slot to replace what you currently have and then reinstall the OS. Ofc, I'd advise you to make sure you're on the latest BIOS version prior to any hardware upgrades.

Apart from dropping in a larger capacity Intel Optane H10 drive, you can look into these suggestions, since the Intel route isn't going to be cheap.

 

[nekton]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Considering that you have one physical M.2 slot for your SSD/storage options, the only option I see at this point is to backup any and/or all data off of your current SSD, then wipe the drive clean, drop in your SSD of choice into the slot to replace what you currently have and then reinstall the OS. Ofc, I'd advise you to make sure you're on the latest BIOS version prior to any hardware upgrades.

Apart from dropping in a larger capacity Intel Optane H10 drive, you can look into these suggestions, since the Intel route isn't going to be cheap.

Thanks for the welcome!

I have a M.2 USB device that I can use with the Macrium software to clone the drive so that I don't have be limited to having only 1 drive slot. I saw the cloning process done in this video:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL_2veAgqts

(I have no affiliation with the content creator.)

However, while I can find references to issues and extra steps/drivers with Optane drives and I can see in BIOS that the laptop is configured for RAID 0, I am not sure I can clone the drive to the larger one in the m.2/USB device. My googling for a how to on this has come up empty. I have a boatload of software installed which I would like to avoid reinstalling, but if that is what it takes...

So my question specifically is, can I clone a m.2 Nvme Optane drive to a larger non-m.2 Nvme drive? And if so, how?

Thanks for the link, btw!

 

[Bob.B]

I have an Dell Inspiron 7506 2n1 with an Intel Optane H10 512 GB SSD. I run Adobe, Office and VirtualBox with linux distro guests. I have run out of disk space and want to upgrade to 1TB of storage.

I had planned on buying a 1TB drive like the one in the link below and using Macrium software, clone the drive increase the C: partition to its maximum value.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K1J3C23/ref=ask_ql_qh_dp_hza?th=1

I am not really a hardware person but after some reading and checking BIOS of my laptop. I am now realizing this isn't as easy as it would be if I was upgrading a non-Optane drive because of the RAID 0 configuration Optane seems to use.

Am I better off in just getting the 1TB version of the above Optane drive or are there still a series of steps necessary to deal with upgrading a RAID 0 SSD?
Can I get away with upgrading without a lot of difficulty to a non-Optane drive like the one in the link from my Optane one? There is a significant price difference (nearly twice the amount!)

Any links or guidance is appreciated. Sorry for asking what are probably some pretty basic questions for hardware enthusiasts.

If your have the irst app installed I would think you could open the app and disable the caching.
Reboot and make sure stuff works.
If it all looks good then clone the 512 to the 1TB.
That's all a wag since I don't have one to play with.
It would be a good idea to backup your stuff before playing with this.