How To Clone NVMe SSD to NEW or LARGER NVMe SSD (Easy Step By Step Tutorial)

hey everybody this is Tech Guy Charlie welcome to the channel alright so in this video I'm going to show you how to clone your existing nvme drive onto another nvme drive and this will come in very handy if you want to upgrade to a larger nvme drive but you don't want to go through the hassle of backing up all your files and going through the cumbersome process of reinstalling Windows and all your apps and yes I have done a video similar to this almost two years ago but since then things have changed so it is now time to do an updated version so done with the intro now let's start the video now for this upgrade you only need two things first off you'll need a new m.2 nvme SSD and secondly a USB m.2 nvme SSD enclosure so this is what we are gonna use to clone the existing drive onto the new one now one important thing you gotta keep in mind is that in this video we are cloning for a laptop that has a single m.2 slot and this is how majority of laptops are gonna be like but if your laptop or desktop has two or more m.2 slots you don't need this enclosure because then you can just straight away plug the new nvme SSD into your motherboard and start the cloning process but I am assuming that your laptop or desktop does not have a second m.2 and vme slot because majority of them don't so in this case you will need to get yourself this enclosure and this enclosure is very useful because once we are done with the cloning process you can actually repurpose the nvme SSD that will come out of your laptop top as a high speed USB flash drive using this enclosure I will show you how to do that later in the video and it's got everything we will need from screws two USB cables to even a screwdriver I will put a purchase link to this in the video's description so let us start by installing the new SSD in the enclosure and we are going to clone everything to a two terabyte WD blue sn570 nvme SSD and the reason why I have picked this is because it is cheap runs cool and performs very well I'm actually using two of these in my main PC and so far they have been super reliable and just so you know I've got this with my own money so this is not sponsored by WD so once you've got the enclosure ready connect it to your laptop using the USB cables that came in the Box I'm using the type C to type c cable because this laptop has a USBC Port but if yours does not use the type C to type a cable okay so once you've got the SSD enclosure plugged in go ahead and verify that the SSD inside the enclosure is being detected by your computer you can do this by right clicking on the start menu and going into Disk Management and if it's a brand new unformatted SSD the computer is gonna prompt you to initialize it and you don't need to initialize because the cloning software is going to do that for you but if you are reusing an old SSD which is already formatted and initialized then it's gonna show up here and in the file explorer inside this PC and speaking of the cloning software we're gonna use macrium reflect now I've got a ton of comments on my previous videos saying that it is not free anymore which is sort of true but you know what the 30-day trial has all the functionality enabled so that is more than enough if you just want to clone your drive and of course you gotta do this within the first 30 days after installing I've got the reflect 8 home trial installed and I will put the link to this website in the video's description but I would still urge you to go ahead and purchase this software because it is an awesome piece of utility and before you start the cloning process make sure that encryption like BitLocker is Switched Off to check you can go into the Windows settings then privacy and security and then device encryption you can see that encryption is off and if we click on BitLocker you can see it is not available on this laptop because it is running Windows 11 home so switch off encryption if it is there you can switch it on later after you clone okay so after you download install and run macrium reflect this is the screen that you're gonna see now this part of the screen is going to show you the drives that are connected to the PC you can see it is showing us two drives disk one is our internal boot drive and disk 2 is the drive that is inside the enclosure so what we want to do is clone the internal drive that contains the C partition onto the external so start by selecting disk 1 and then click on clone this disk make sure all the partitions are selected because we want to clone everything from the internal nvme now click on select a disk to clone 2 and then from here pick the drive that is in the external nvme enclosure so you can see the two terabyte drive being listed here now once you've got the destination disk selected click on copy partitions and select shrink or extend to fill the target disk you want to do this to utilize the entire space is on the new SSD otherwise after cloning the two terabyte SSD is going to show up as 500 gigabytes so doing this is important so it looks like everything is in order after uploading our C drive is gonna have a lot of space so we will click on next next and then finish so there you go the cloning has started you can see that the LED is blinking in the reflection now the cloning process takes a couple of minutes and the speed depends on how full the internal drive is and on how fast the USB port on your PC really is also these nvme drives get really hot while they are being written too so during the cloning process this WD blue gets up to a 50 degree celsius which is pretty normal the one in my PC goes up to 60 degrees and it has worked fine for more than three years so don't worry if the enclosure gets really warm alright so there you go the cloned Drive is now ready for use and it only took about 8 minutes and 21 seconds so now let's shut the computer down and swap the drives and see if it boots okay so I've taken the cover off and removed the new SSD from the enclosure and you can see here is the factory installed nvme so what we are gonna do now is remove this from the laptop and install the new SSD and depending on your model this may vary but this one actually has a thermal pad beneath it so we are gonna retain that and reuse it on this SSD and the installation is very simple make sure that it clicks and then reinstall the screw and that is it now before you reinstall all the screws I would recommend that you power the laptop on as it is to see if it boots into windows so let's try that alright so moment of truth let's see if it boots into Windows hey and if you are wondering here is the original SSD that came out of the laptop also keep in mind that the first time you start your computer up using the brand new cloned SSD it's gonna take a while but eventually it's gonna become fast now if we go to this PC you can see that this is the cloned Triumph and we have got four two terabytes virtual space let's bring the camera up close so you guys can see properly now let me show you the activation status so right click on the start menu and system then we'll go into product key and activation and here you can see that Windows is activated now let's also check office so launch any of the office apps I'm going to launch word so in office if we go to account you can see that this copy of office is active so there is no reactivation needed for office and windows if you just want to clone your drive to a new one okay so now I'm gonna show you how to repurpose the SSD that came out of the laptop as a high speed USB flash drive so we are going to install this in the enclosure this round thing goes at the bottom like this and then we can just install the screw and don't forget the thermal pads they are essential all right so here we go let's plug the enclosure in and now this thing has the SSD that used to be inside the laptop as you have seen I've just swapped it over so here we go so that is the external nvme it is showing up as the D drive so here's the thing we're not gonna use any of the contents that are on the external nvme SSD because we have already cloned this drive onto the new one which is now inside our laptop now you can always right click and select format but I don't really recommend this method because there are hidden partitions on this nvme SSD why because this contains a fully functional Windows installation and I can actually Show You by right clicking on the start menu and going to Disk Management okay so inside Disk Management you can see that disk 1 is our external nvme SSD and as you can see there are three system partitions on it and if you right click this there is no option option to delete this because it is locked the only partition you will be able to delete is the windows partition which is not enough because that will still leave the system partitions intact and that system partition may cause conflicts in the future so let me show you what you should do so open up the start menu and type in CMD and run command prompt as administrator type desk part that is diskpart and press enter so disk part is slightly more advanced and it will clear out all the system partitions on the external SSD so once you have desk part running through the command prompt type list disk and press enter and this will show you all of the disks that are connected to your PC and you guys already know disk 1 is our external nvme SSD if you are not sure right click on the start menu and go to Disk Management and identify which is the external SSD so like I said for this laptop disk 1 is the external nvme SSD so now I will type in cell SEL disk 1 and press enter so now the external SSD is selected now type in Queen and press enter and that will clear out everything that is on the external SSD including the locked system partitions and it's telling us succeeded in cleaning the disk so now we can go ahead and exit the disk partition utility now after performing this little procedure you will notice that the drive does not show up in the Windows Explorer that's because everything from the external SSD has been wiped off including all of the partitions so right click on the start menu and go to Disk Management and you will automatically get the initialize disk prompt select GPD and click on OK and scroll down and there is our external nvme SSD which is inside the enclosure so again same procedure right click new symbol volume next next next next and finish and that is pretty much all there is to it and now the external nvme SSD shows up in this PC now calling this thing fast is actually an understatement you know what let me actually show you the file transfer speeds so what we are gonna do is copy over a bunch of videos so we're gonna copy 20 gigabyte worth of videos onto the external nvme SSD so just drag and drop and as you can see it is giving us a speed of over 300 megabytes per second and also keep in mind if you want these kind of speeds your internal hard drive should also be an SSD if you've got a mechanical internal hard drive you will never achieve these kind of speeds with an external SSD so that is over 300 megabytes worth of sustained write speed on the external SSD now the read speeds are slightly better so while copying the files back to the laptop we got a read speed of about 440 megabytes per second and you know what these speeds are fast enough to edit 4K videos directly off the external and vme SSD and the best part is that this enclosure is upgradable so you can easily replace the 500 gigabyte nvme inside this with a two terabyte one which is something that I would recommend also a very important thing whenever you want to disconnect a removable Drive such as this one always use the safely remove Hardware button in the taskbar right click and eject this makes sure that there is no data corruption on the drive anyways guys that's how you clone an SSD and repurpose the OEM SSD using an external nvme enclosure also once you are done with the cloning process don't forget to turn on encryption so you want to go to privacy and security then device encryption you might want to switch this data encryption on if you have Windows 11 home or else turn on BitLocker drive encryption if you have Windows 10 or 11 Pro so thank you for watching I hope this video was helpful if it was make sure to press the like button and do make sure to subscribe to the channel I've got plenty of PC tutorials on the channel alright so I will see you guys in another video and this is Tech Guy Charlie signing off

Channel: Tech Guy Charlie

Views: 191,238

Keywords: cloning nvme to nvme, nvme to nvme, clone nvme to larger nvme, ssd cloning software free, how to clone ssd to m.2, how to clone nvme ssd laptop, macrium reflect ssd to ssd

Id: uE9xMNidGEo

Length: 14min 4sec (844 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 27 2023