Hello everyone,
Indeed, trying to find a M-key SSD M2 case, can be quite of a challenge and honestly, very pricey and totally not needed to upgrade your internal SSD: At the end, what we try to do is to increase disc size on a laptop and migrate our windows on the new drive, without re-installing everything ... This how it worked for me
I) Small reminder about standards and incompatibilities:
>> a M-key hard drive (5 pins) is a PCIe standard (= not a SATA) and, as PCIe, it needs to be close to the CPU BUS to reach full speed (i.e 3.6gb per sec of transfer rate), so it is located directly on the Mother board.
>> B Key and B+M key drives (6 pins) are Sata based and can be easily mounted in an external case via USB, as there are, at the end, SATA drive. Side note: there is no compatibility between the SATA (6 pins) and PCIe (5 pins) standard - the adaptors are not compatible
>> SSD M2 B-key or B+M key are slower and more easy to manipulate: they can be easily mounted in an external case - traditional USB drive to clone, recover or backup
>> SSD M2 - M-key are more complex and can be mostly mounted only as main drive. Hense the need to prepare an USB Bootable memory stick to redeploy the system on this type of SSD drive.
As said above by setsailsoon, you can probab. find adaptors to U2 to USB3 - but I didn't try this option.
However the solution below is proof tested (by me last week end!) will allow you to
upgrade your SSD without the need to buy an adaptor
II) To migrate your windows installation on to a SSD M2 PCIe disc, here is the equipment you need (...on top of your Laptop with SSD M2):
-
A new and bigger SSD M2 (M key - please check what is the standard accepted by your laptop before any purchase! )
- A
32Gb PCI 2 - USB Memory Stick (work with 64gb but stay on PCI 2 as some computers will not boot on PCI 3 USB dongles even if you activate the option in the BIOS)
-
An USB external Hard drive with a minimum 256gb of free space to store the Macrium Disc Image file (in my context I moved from 256 to 512gb - so I needed only a 256gb for the image)
III) Transfer all your data and your operating system on the new SSD M2 PCIe - Procedure
Prerequisite: download and install Macrium Reflect Freeware !!
a)
Boot your laptop and use Macrium Reflect to
create an image of the main Disk (C
(attention: not only partitions - the whole disk c:!! ) -
once done, save it on the external drive,
b)
Create a USB bootable media from the same software used to create the disc image (creation of the macrium usb uefi boot is super fast! at least, 10x Faster than Windows Media Creation tool and includes as well Windows PE)
>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5SUBtcBH-Y
>>
https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Creating+rescue+media
c) once the USB Bootable dongle is ready and the Disc image is stored on the external hard drive, proceed to
turn off your computer (really "off", no sleep mode nor hibernate) and
unplug the power cable
d) remove the original SSD from the laptop and install the new bigger SSD - close/screw the laptop
e) connect the USB bootable media
f) Turn on the laptop and enter the Bios quickly to select the boot option to
boot on USB drive
g)
once booted on Macrium recovery interface, connect the external drive to another USB port and browse to select the image to recover - Macrium will take care of the cloning!
h)
Once cloning is complete, don't reboot nor quit, but go to
"Fix Boot Menu" option and select the new disc for booting
III.i) Now you can
quit and reboot, your laptop should be booting on the new disc, and you should be set.
Now remains to extend the main partition.
Personally, I took the option to create a new disc for data only (C: 256gb + D: 256gb)
enjoy!!
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