A NVMe SSD True Story

[Melbosa]

Background

So not sure everyone is up to speed on what is new in the SSD space (I'm sure Lazy and probably Tom, but hey here is my story anyway), but I spent most of my night trying to Figure out how to Clone a 250GB NVMe PCIe x4 drive to a 500GB NVMe PCIe x4 drive with only 1 M.2 PCIe NVMe port on a computer.  For those whom don't know the history of SSD for consumers, first came Flash (and some fun other things in there), then came SATA (3g then 6g), then came M.2 NGFF (SATA AHCI Controller based) and now we have NVMe PCIe Controller based drives.

If anyone here has not done a HD/SSD to Better SSD Upgrade, you've either had another SATA port free to use for the second drive or had a USB to SATA adapter handy.  Then you let the Drive to Drive clone begin once ready.  And when that's done you shutdown, remove the old drive and replace with new... bob's your uncle!

Problem

Well what do you do with only one M.2 Port on a laptop?  I have a Startech M.2 to USB 3.0 adapter... but is only good for NGFF controller on drives... no NVMe support!  Turns out NVMe is so new, no NVMe to USB devices exist from any manufacturer.  And to add to my headache, you can't even by a cheap PCIe NVMe 2+ port card for a workstation yet.  Only options are MoBos with 2+ NVMe ports on them, which not even my Alienware has (I have 4x M.2 NGFF ports though lol).

Oh the toping to this little dilemma: Windows 10 x64 UEFI Secure Boot GPT Partitioned install (if you have been working with partitions and Windows, you might know what this is all about, but hey not huge if you don't to this story).

Solution

So what does one do if I don't have access to any type of fancy Ghost or Acronis like products to do a Image backup of a hard disk (remember those?)?  Well most free products or open source ones don't quite do the UEFI Secure Boot and GPT Partition support... some do one, some do the other, and when they do both, they don't Disk to Image backup.

But what did I find?  A gem for free in the rough!  Macrium Reflect!  This product is free for personal use (or one time shots commercially for me until the damn industry comes up with a NVMe to USB device, so I can use Drive Manufacturer Clone tools that come with the drives) and uses the latest WinPE from Microsoft to make it all work.

First I installed Reflect on the client machine, attached an USB Stick and made a Recovery Boot Media with the software - this creates the WinPE with the Reflect software and all the drivers you need on your system preinstalled on the WinPE.  This also is a UEFI Secure Boot WinPE that understands GPT Boot Partitions (because it is just a Stripped down version of Windows 10).  Two obstacles down!

Next I use Reflect to make a Disk to Image backup to an external USB 3.0 SATA Drive I have that can hold the source disk data size. Whaaatt?! The product is free and does both Clone Drive to Drive and Drive to Image; NICE!

Then I shutdown, swap the NVMe drives out for each other the laptop.  I put in the Recovery USB drive and boot into Reflect WinPE.  Then I add the external USB 3.0 SATA drive into the mix, refresh the storage screen.

Now I start a restore Image to Disk process, and wait for it to finish.  Shutdown and disconnect.  Crossfingers!

And finally boot up.  Vola!  A working Windows 10 x64 UEFI Secure Boot and GPT Partitioned upgraded NVMe install. 


I should also say I had to go in to Diskpart to follow this article to get rid of some badly placed Recovery Partitions.  After that I was able to expand the C: for the client to use all available space of the new drive.


And that's my story.

[Tom]

Dang. That was a lot harder than it needed to be

I seem to recall seing dual m.2 cards.. but after a quick search on newegg, it seems none support 2x nvme. <trump>sad</trump>

I bet the reason is the card would need a PCIe bridge chip to split or share 2-8 pcie ports, depending on how they want to do it. I imagine thats a much harder product to design properly. Sata cards are well known, pcie expanders not so much.

[Tom]

Best I've found on newegg is: https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815256014&cm_re=m.2_pcie_adapter-_-15-256-014-_-Product

Has one pcie/nvme slot and one sata slot.

[Lazybones]

Does the native windows image back to an external drive and then a restore not work?

The last time I shifted a drive that is how I did it, all native tools, added bonus it doesn't care about the target being smaller if there is enough free space.

Not sure how it handles secure boot as I haven't tried under windows 10.

[Melbosa]

Does the native windows image back to an external drive and then a restore not work?

The last time I shifted a drive that is how I did it, all native tools, added bonus it doesn't care about the target being smaller if there is enough free space.

Not sure how it handles secure boot as I haven't tried under windows 10.

It would fail on this Dell laptop for some dumb reason. I couldn't get the external drive to recognize in the windows 10 repair.  Either way, it would have been the same steps using the window based backup and restore if it would have worked.

[Melbosa]

Best I've found on newegg is: https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815256014&cm_re=m.2_pcie_adapter-_-15-256-014-_-Product

Has one pcie/nvme slot and one sata slot.

Yeah I'd have to buy two of them to make this work. But nothing local so while I waited for shipment, my steps would still be faster turn around. Two bad they didn't have two PCIe x4 NVMe ports.  Think I just have to wait until the industry catches up to the tech. Until then I have a way to do this now.

[Tom]

There are some single slot cards. And Some nvme ssds come with them.

But yeah, doing it in an annoying way is still faster than waiting days for delivery.