[SOLVED] Upgrading storage with only one M.2 port

[DMorrison]

Hi folks, I'm in a bit of a predicament here, and I'd like your advice!

I'm planning on upgrading my Thinkpad X1 Carbon 5th Gen's storage from 256GB to 1TB. The issue is that this model only has one M.2 port, so copying directly from one drive to another is not an option. I have an external drive with enough space to copy my current drive onto, but the issue that I'm not sure how to overcome is getting this onto the new drive. I can't simply swap in the new drive because there will be nothing to boot from. The external drive is connected via USB, but there's other things on the drive, would it be possible to format the remaining space to be used as a bootable USB, from which I can copy everything to, then swap out the M.2s, boot from the external drive, then copy everything onto the new M.2?

Any help at all would be much appreciated and thanks for taking the time to answer!

 

[USAFRet]

1x m.2 slot with an Image

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.

 

[DMorrison]

God tier advice my friend! Writing this from Win10 on a 1TB drive, I can say that this 100% worked, no issues at all (ymmv), smooth like buttah. Thank you so much.