How to Clone M.2 SSD?

[Crystal Sharrd]

I'm planning on upgrading the SSD in my laptop. It's a SanDisk X600 M.2 2280 SATA 128GB according to Device Manager, and I'm wondering the best way to clone it so I can upgrade to a new SSD without reinstalling Windows. And then how to best securely erase the old hard drive.

[Electric Cupcake]

Nvme or m.2 sata?

A sata dock with an automatic cloning function is probably easiest. You'll need a 2.5 inch sata enclosure for the m.2 stick. However, m.2 nvme and m.2 sata are different standards, so make sure any enclosure you get is the right one.

Otherwise, a simple USB adapter for the m.2 stick and cloning software like Macrium Reflect or plain old dd.

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-2-5-Inch-Aluminum-Enclosure-EC-M2CU/dp/B07924J5NT
https://www.amazon.com/WAVLINK-Dual-Bay-Docking-Station-Functions/dp/B018FTE87S/

As for wiping the old one, there's plenty of free secure disk wiping tools to choose from, though despite what a certain orange idiot said about a certain email server, Bleachbit is not one of them.

[Crystal Sharrd]

It looks like my laptop supports both NVME and SATA, what I have right now is a SATA, and I was looking at getting a the next size up of the same type of SSD.
https://www.newegg.com/sandisk-256gb-x600/p/1B4-00G6-00020

[_I_]

or use a usb sata adapter with sata-m.2 adapter

or just a usb m.2 adapter (make sure they are m key for nvme drives)
https://www.amazon.com/Enclosure-Tool-Free-Adapter-Storage-External/dp/B08GFF7WTJ/ref=sr_1_45_sspa

[iceman1980]

To do this the right way.

There is a number of steps required, the open-source tool known as Clonezilla works very well. I did an M.2 to M.2 copy the other day myself. Remember there is a minor problem that will occur if you don't address it. This is disk / partition alignment what will actually happen is your disk will clone 1 to 1 copy of your ssd to the other that means it will leave unallocated the remainder of the disk. For this you will have to move and re-align the SSDs storage meaning you'll have to expand out the disk to occupy the unallocated partition space.


Both disks must be present at boot-time with Clonezilla

Select disk to disk clone
select the "source drive" the drive you are actually cloning
then select the destination drive the drive you want to put the new clone on
then proceed.

It's very fast, now do not leave the current SSD in the machine after cloning select the option to power down your PC. After doing this remove the current M.2 SSD after cloning now you should have a functional clone.

Next verify the clone was successful / applications work as intended.
Shutdown your PC then boot from GParted Bootdisk in GParted find your cloned drive and resize the "unallocated" disk space at the end, (1MB will remain unallocated due to GPT)

You may experience problems with the disk getting scrambled initially after cloning this is not an issue, all that needs to be done is chkdsk /F on the C:\ drive and should fix this issue after this go back to re-sizing your drive partition to occupy the entire drives space.

You thought it would be easy didn't you? Your other option is to use Acronis True Image or AOMEI Backupper.

[Crystal Sharrd]

Product ∏님이 먼저 게시:

You thought it would be easy didn't you?

Oh, I didn't think it was going to be easy. I hoped it would be, knew it wasn't going to be.

[nullable]

If SanDisk has a cloning tool I'd just use that. In your case you really just need that and a USB to SATA adapter. I've cloned several SSDs using the basic cloning tools provided by many manufacturers. It's not difficult. You can certainly make it more difficult if you want though.

[Crystal Sharrd]

One thing I forgot to mention is that I have Secure Boot enabled, if that means anything.