windows 10 cloning SATA SSD to NVME SSD

[jp2341]

Hi,

I am upgrading my PC and want to clone the existing Windows 10 OS drive to a new NVME SSD. I have no way of connecting the new disk to the existing PC. The existing drive is not encrypted.

What is the best way to clone once both are installed in the new PC. Years ago I think I used some kind of Linux boot disk to do this, but I am a bit out of the loop.

I suppose another option would be to boot the new PC on the old sata SSD and then clone in Windows - again what is the best tool for the job these days?

[freedonX]

I've seen using CloneZilla for years now.
Check this video, even though almost 10 years old , the fundamentals are the same
 

 

[xMorpheousx416]

Been using Macrium Reflect myself.

Open the program, choose the clone option, select your drives.. drag and drop the partitions (in the order you see them) click to clone, and then wait until the app finishes. 

Even clones boot drives without having to restart, and no need to change any drive options (BIOS / Command lines etc) to make the cloned drive bootable.

 

[adrynalyne]

Another vote for Reflect. 

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

I would suggest checking with the manufacturer of the NVMe SSD you intend to install to see what tool they recommend using to clone the SATA SSD.  The reason for this is that SATA and NVMe devices use different device drivers, and it is possible that you would end up with a non-bootable installlation on the NVMe SSD after cloning.

Another related issue is whether the current Windows 10 installation on the SATA SSD is legacy (BIOS/MBR-based) or modern (UEFI/GPT-based).  If the former, then a straight cloning operation will result in a non-bootable installation on the NVMe SSD, as UEFI-enabled firmware is a prerequisite for Windows 10 on an NVMe SSD.  There are ways to non-destructively convert a BIOS-based Windows 10 installation to a UEFI one by repartitioning it and creating the EFI system system partition required bye UEFI, but that takes time to accomplish, and you would want to make sure you had at least one backup of the drive in case a problem occurred during the conversion (disk error, system crash, power outage, etc.).

It may, in fact, be quicker to disconnect the SATA SSD and perform a clean install of Windows 10 to the blank NVMe SSD.  Then after you have the operating system updated and configured to your liking, attach the SATA SSD and copy your data over from it to the NVMe SSD.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

[xMorpheousx416]

On 11/01/2023 at 23:51, goretsky said:

I would suggest checking with the manufacturer of the NVMe SSD you intend to install to see what tool they recommend using to clone the SATA SSD. 

Agreed, you can do this.

On 11/01/2023 at 23:51, goretsky said:

The reason for this is that SATA and NVMe devices use different device drivers, and it is possible that you would end up with a non-bootable installlation on the NVMe SSD after cloning.

This is where it's arguable that quantum physics plays different roles in our lives. I have cloned drives since Windows XP, and never had a non-bootable drive as a result. Windows 10 (and 11) have a ton of default drivers... and unlike the older systems, will normally (?) use said drivers upon any changes. You may end up with your graphics card not using it's drivers upon the first boot, but a reboot usually fixes that. Windows, after the first boot... will and should, install a basic Microsoft based controller driver for the NVMe drive. But, to avoid any confusion for the original question, asking tech support for the NVMe is never a bad idea.

On 11/01/2023 at 23:51, goretsky said:

as UEFI-enabled firmware is a prerequisite for Windows 10 on an NVMe SSD. 

I read this a hundred times... and then I tried searching to support this for the last half an hour. I couldn't find anything to support any fact that you need to have UEFI enabled in order to install Windows 10 on a PCI-e based, NVMe drive. Now, aside from the OP.. so we don't confuse them, I think that comment needs to be backed up by several resources... as the only one I can add is that I had Windows 10 on a non-UEFI based BIOS (Legacy) and she ran perfectly. When I updated to 11, then I turned on UEFI (and went thru a completely different route which isn't part of this post) and switched the drive from MBR to GPT without reinstalling anything. That process, can hose a drive and it's install if not, and even if, done properly.

Do you have proof Windows 10 requires UEFI? I am truly curious.. not calling you out here, I like learning too.

On 11/01/2023 at 23:51, goretsky said:

It may, in fact, be quicker to disconnect the SATA SSD and perform a clean install of Windows 10 to the blank NVMe SSD.

I'll take that bet.

Reflect takes about 30 to 50 mins to clone an SSD to NVMe, and with no issues, boots back in seconds. Compare that making changes in the BIOS, then a 20 min OS install, driver updates, OS updates and then copying /pasting (only files, apps will require new installs)... I'm thinking that's about three to four hours. Not including installing other large apps such as Office, Adobe... etc.

 

Don't want all this to confuse you, JP... but some of this confused me, as I have yet to experience those downfalls or seen anyone else that did. Doesn't mean they aren't possible, hell, everything is.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

Oh, apologies if I confused you, @xMorpheousx416.  You can definitely install Microsoft Windows 10 to a computer with BIOS firmware and an MBR-partitioned drive.  It's just that the drive that Windows 10 is being installed to will need to have a SATA interface and not an NVMe one.  You can also have a computer with UEFI firmware, and install Windows 10 to a SATA drive in it as well.  Again apologies if I wasn't clear about this in my previous post.

I've done lots of drive cloning, too, over the years.  Usually that was to perform a simple capacity increase by copying a smaller capacity drive to a larger one.  If you have been cloning IDE to IDE, or SATA to SATA on legacy versions of Windows and not changing CPU brands then you would likely would never have had a problem cloning drives; you're not changing the device drivers involved in drive or chipset access.  But NVMe drives use different interfaces than SATA, and without the driver being present you are likely to come across issues.  It's just like if you cloned an IDE drive to a SCSI drive back in the old days, but didn't have the SCSI controller drivers installed.  That's not really anything to do with quantum physics but computer engineering issues.  For example, Samsung's NVMe drivers are not part of the inbox driver set for Windows 10 (unsure about Windows 11) and initially needed to be injected via the F6 (the old floppy disk driver installation method, although you could just have them on the USB flash drive) during installation, or else the Windows 10 installation would just report it didn't find any drives on which to install an operating system, and that would end the installation.m  I think around 19H2 or 20H1 update that the Microsoft-supplied NVME storage miniport drive (filename: STORNVME.SYS) introduced a base level of compatibility with Samsung NVMe drives so you could at least get the operating system installed, but like the Microsoft Basic VGA Graphics driver, it's always best to replace that as soon as possible in order to obtain the best performance.

Microsoft made UEFI firmware and the GPT partitioning of drives the default options for new installs beginning with Windows 8 in 2012.  Although it's not the central focus of them, I do talk about this change in the Windows 8 white papers I wrote here, here, and here.

Here are some articles and discussions that you may find helpful:

• Dell Knowledgebase Article #000143245, Frequently Asked Questions Regarding NVMe Solid-State Drives (SSDs)
• Dell Knowledgebase Article #000132465, Windows 10 install with NVMe SSD and SATA drives (note: covers a now-resolved issue, for background information only)
• Hewlett-Packard Customer Support Knowledge Base #35900346, HP PCs - No Drives Can Be Found During Windows 10 Installation (Intel 11th Generation processors (note: this covers an issue with older models,for background information only)
• Intel Support Article #000024558, Converting a Data SSD with Windows Installation from Legacy to UEFI without Data Loss
• Intel Support Article #000025535, How to Install Windows 10® to a GUID Partition Table (GPT) Partition
• Western Digital Support Article ID #47202, EXTREME PRO M.2 NVMe 3D SSD: System Support Checklist (note: instructions apply to multiple WD drive models)

As I mentioned above,you can certainly install Windows 10 to a computer with a Legacy BIOS and to an MBR-partitioned drive.  If the computer has UEFI firmware enabled, you can even install Windows 10 to it on a GPT-partitioned SATA drive (or SCSI or SAS drive for that matter) and get all the features that UEFI/GPT bring, such as Secure Boot, support for larger and multiple partitions, and so forth.

Now, it is certainly possible that some drive cloning software may perform an MBR to GPT conversion if it needs to do that in order for the new drive to be booted from; if you take a look at the first Intel support article I linked to, you can see that is a fairly deterministic process and should be something that can be automated from within a disk cloning program.  Come to think of it, I would be surprised if there wasn't at least one that already did this.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

[LiLmEgZ]

Goretsky has many valid points on this matter, such as not having a bootable device when cloning SATA SSD to NVMe SSD due to that NVMe SSDs have different firmwares and such.

In my honest personal opinion along with Goretsky's points, it s in your best interest that you are best off reinstalling Windows to an NVMe from a clean scratch state rather than cloning your SATA SSD to a NVMe for the best experience as a clean installation is always nice to have considering you will gain a HUGE performance increase as well by doing a clean install of Windows on an NVMe SSD since they are many times faster than your traditional SATA SSDs are in a general sense of performance ratings (you can check various sites for benchmarks on this as well).

Bottom Line: Clean Install Windows on NVMe SSD for best performance out of the box, you'll thank us later

P.S. PLEASE make sure you have a proper heatsink installed on your NVMe SSD as well to avoid thermal throttling later down the road!

[+Warwagon MVC]

On 12/01/2023 at 13:14, xMorpheousx416 said:

Reflect takes about 30 to 50 mins to clone an SSD to NVMe,

That all depends how full the SSD is. I've seen SSDs clone in under 5 mins. At least with True Image.

[farmeunit]

Also, something like this is super handy.  Has all the connections for mSATA, 2.5 and NVMe, and can be plugged into USB.

Honestly, as mentioned above, just install from scratch on new drive, then you can copy your profile over.  

You can also cope game files over after re-installing the software, etc..;

[xMorpheousx416]

On 13/01/2023 at 03:36, goretsky said:

That's not really anything to do with quantum physics but computer engineering issues. 

My reference to physics, quantum or otherwise... reflects more on chaos theory. Regardless of whether or not, you and I have the exact same hardware... neither one of us will have the exact same experiences with it. Seeing as you're referencing Dell and Intel, whereas I never touch the stuff... I've been doing custom boards and AMD all my life. Only Intel boards I've ever had was my first Pentium 3/500, and one given to me to avoid hitting the garbage bin. I used it as an HTPC for a while before turning those duties back over to an AMD system.

And thank you... that's the information I like to get when discussing the larger picture, even though all we're really doing is talking about a new install or cloning that may seem simple, and it should be.. but things do go wrong.

Now... for the topic at hand, I truly haven't had any issues cloning SSD to NVMe using Reflect. I'm typing to you from that very machine it was done on. I went from Windows 10 to 11, then turned on UEFI for 11 when I got all those damn reminders I needed it to install 11... having said that, if cloning isn't an option, there's never anything better than a fresh, clean install.

I would recommend, however, that you have all your needed system drivers ready on a USB stick (if available), as that will make it quicker to install and get the system ready before OS updates, and then of course, copying all your data over to the new drive.

On 13/01/2023 at 10:30, Warwagon said:

That all depends how full the SSD is. I've seen SSDs clone in under 5 mins. At least with True Image.

True... a newly installed OS is about 13GB... but a nearly full 1TB SSD to NVMe takes a tad bit more time. 

 

Thanks for posting the info... always a good thing to learn new things, ideas and other's experiences.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

Oh, I was just referencing authoritative external third-party sources; I will admit I didn't specifically search for anything AMD related when coming up with those URLs, but I didn't specifically search for anything Intel related, either.  I would not be surprised if motherboard manufacturers like ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, et al had similar documents on their support web sites; they just didn't appear in my search results.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

[jp2341]

The source disk was 1.8TB/2TB used. Reinstalling Windows was considered but faced with reinstalling all my games and apps, honestly I couldn't be bothered unless this route was forced.

Net result is Windows is snappier and any games on that drive load faster, so it worked ok for me. In bios, I just changed boot drive to the NVME and it booted right up no issues. Probably worth noting that some missing drivers were just presented for installation on boot into Windows. I assume these are coming from the BIOS or + internet, its a Z790 board. 

In terms of cloning I started with Macrium, but it felt slower than it should be. Moved to clonezilla and let it run whilst I slept. Clonezilla was getting 14.5GB/min, so with 1.8TB it took just over 2 hours to clone.

[xMorpheousx416]

On 14/01/2023 at 04:03, adam.mt said:

Anyone encountered this error? It's one I'm currently struggling with.

 

https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/plugins/servlet/mobile?contentId=3276875#content/view/3276875

 

This is trying to clone a 120GB SSD to Samsung 500GB model, both connected to SATA headers on the motherboard.

(I even went as far as a manual transfer by using diskpart to establish the new disk structure and DISM but writing the DISM image threw a write error. Maybe the Samsung drive is faulty? But I thought unlikely since new and otherwise works)

I don't want to have to setup afresh due to the custom software on the drive and not having the license details to hand.

 

Any assistance appreciated.

 

Adam, I'd recommend starting your own thread... hijacking this one isn't really a decent thing to do. Aside from that, your issue may end up being completely different than JPs. On top of all that, your link just returns itself to this thread for some reason.

 

On 14/01/2023 at 09:45, jp2341 said:

The source disk was 1.8TB/2TB used. Reinstalling Windows was considered but faced with reinstalling all my games and apps, honestly I couldn't be bothered unless this route was forced.

Net result is Windows is snappier and any games on that drive load faster, so it worked ok for me. In bios, I just changed boot drive to the NVME and it booted right up no issues. Probably worth noting that some missing drivers were just presented for installation on boot into Windows. I assume these are coming from the BIOS or + internet, its a Z790 board. 

In terms of cloning I started with Macrium, but it felt slower than it should be. Moved to clonezilla and let it run whilst I slept. Clonezilla was getting 14.5GB/min, so with 1.8TB it took just over 2 hours to clone.

Yeah.. Macrium took about 50+ mins to clone my 1TB SSD to NVMe... so, about two hours for either app sounds about right. Glad you got it up and running.

The drivers you mentioned?... probably came from the Windows cache on disk. Would have also been available should you have ran Windows Update after returning to the desktop.

Either way, you're up and running and that's what we like to hear.