Rudel_chw Posted July 24, 2024 Posted July 24, 2024 Hello, My PC had six storage drives, the fastest being a 1 TB NVMe unit which held Windows, a few software like Office and Adobe, and DCS. The remaining drives included one SSD of 1 TB where I held my documents and my Lightroom photo collection, plus 4 older hard drives for Backups and lesser games. As the 1TB nvme drive was getting cramped, as DCS alone used over 600 GB, I have now finally bit the bullet and purchased a 2 TB unit to use as an upgrade. I know that many people swear by Gen.5 units, but those are still hideusly expensive on my country and would force me to upgrade the motherboard as well (this is my current MB: https://pg.asrock.com/mb/AMD/B550 Phantom Gaming 4/index.asp), so I ended up purchasing a Gen.4 unit at a price of US$ 175, this one: I wanted to share a few highlights about the install process, in case it might help other users: 1) First, I wanted to avoid a Windows reinstall, as I've spent a lot of time tuning my Windows and drivers and wanted to avoid doing it all over again, so I needed to clone the drive. 2) Since my MB has two M2 slots, I opted to mount both drives simultaneously and then perform the cloning. The software I chose to use was a 30-day trial version of Macrium Reflect: https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree This software has the advantage of running within Windows, so no need for boot pendrives nor running DOS-like front-ends. 3) To avoid any chance of error, as I have so many drives, I disconnected the Sata cables of all my existing drives, leaving just the two NVMe units connected. This is my motherboard with the GPU removed and just my original 1 TB unit: And here is the new drive already installed on the secondary M2 slot: I start Windows and then start the Cloning software: Disk 1 is my existing Windows drive and the new unit was detected automatically as Disk 2, we can see it is empty. The One Drive message can be ignored, it is caused by having all my other drives disconnected during the cloning. I click on "Clone this Disk" and the software automatically offers to clone the disk while at the same time enlarge the partition 3 to take advantage of the larger destination drive, like this: The cloning took about 30 minutes and then I powered off the PC, removed my original 1 TB drive and moved the new 2 TB unit onto its slot. I would have loved to leave both NVMe on the PC, but unfortunately my motherboard disables 3 of its 6 Sata ports when using the secondary M2 slot, so I chose to just replace my original 1TB with the 2 TB one, to keep all of my other drivers operational. The free NVMe will be sold at the 2nd hand market or used to upgrade my spare PC. So, that's all, I can highly recommend this cloning software, worked perfectly. Best regards to all, Eduardo 3 For work: iMac mid-2010 of 27" - Core i7 870 - 6 GB DDR3 1333 MHz - ATI HD5670 - SSD 256 GB - HDD 2 TB - macOS High Sierra For Gaming: 34" Monitor - Ryzen 3600 - 32 GB DDR4 2400 - nVidia RTX2080 - SSD 1.25 TB - HDD 10 TB - Win10 Pro - TM HOTAS Cougar Mobile: iPad Pro 12.9" of 256 GB
LucShep Posted July 24, 2024 Posted July 24, 2024 (edited) Yep, pretty good! Potential "sticky thread" material, as it sure can help others. One side note I'd like to add is that, with most cloning drive software (BTW, I too prefer Macrium Reflect Free) you can also resize partitions in the destination drive. Either by readjusting partition limits with mouse, or by inserting a desired size number for the specific partition. This can be usefull if you decide to increase or decrease a certain partition that you're cloning, in the destination drive, right before you advance with the cloning process. Edited July 24, 2024 by LucShep 2 CGTC - Caucasus retexture | A-10A cockpit retexture | Shadows Reduced Impact | DCS 2.5.6 - a lighter alternative Spoiler Win10 Pro x64 | Intel i7 12700K (OC@ 5.1/5.0p + 4.0e) | 64GB DDR4 (OC@ 3700 CL17 Crucial Ballistix) | RTX 3090 24GB EVGA FTW3 Ultra | 2TB NVMe (MP600 Pro XT) + 500GB SSD (WD Blue) + 3TB HDD (Toshiba P300) + 1TB HDD (WD Blue) | Corsair RMX 850W | Asus Z690 TUF+ D4 | TR FN 240 | Fractal Meshify-C | UAD Volt1 + Sennheiser HD-599SE | 7x USB 3.0 Hub | 50'' 4K Philips PUS7608 UHD TV + Head Tracking | HP Reverb G1 Pro (VR) | TM Warthog + Logitech X56
Smashy Posted July 24, 2024 Posted July 24, 2024 Macrium is awesome. I used it for my last upgrade too. If you're paranoid like me, I'd suggest creating an image and putting it on an external or to-be-disconnected internal drive before the clone. That way if anything goes wrong, you'll have a copy of your C drive to revert from. Hardware is replaceable, data isn't. If there's a way to <profanity> things up, I'd find a way. 1
Rudel_chw Posted July 24, 2024 Author Posted July 24, 2024 16 minutes ago, Smashy said: If you're paranoid like me, I'd suggest creating an image and putting it on an external or to-be-disconnected internal drive before the clone. my paranoia went only so far as to unplug all my other drives, leaving just the old NVMe and the new one, at that point it was pretty hard to mess things up, I would have had to find a way to clone the old disk onto itself Now that I have space, I'm installing a 2nd instance of DCS, one will have DCS 2.9.5, to run FC3-based aircraft mods and to employ the Lua Console of DCS-BIOS, while the other will have the latest version of DCS: For work: iMac mid-2010 of 27" - Core i7 870 - 6 GB DDR3 1333 MHz - ATI HD5670 - SSD 256 GB - HDD 2 TB - macOS High Sierra For Gaming: 34" Monitor - Ryzen 3600 - 32 GB DDR4 2400 - nVidia RTX2080 - SSD 1.25 TB - HDD 10 TB - Win10 Pro - TM HOTAS Cougar Mobile: iPad Pro 12.9" of 256 GB
BitMaster Posted July 25, 2024 Posted July 25, 2024 One of those things you better get right first time ! It got as lot easier since Windows 10 or later do not need a bootloader and can start right off the actual disk. I usually use Acronis but I have company licenses for that and do understand that is maybe too much for a one time task. Anyway, it worked ! 1 Gigabyte Aorus X570S Master - Ryzen 5900X - Gskill 64GB 3200/CL14@3600/CL14 - Sapphire Nitro+ 7800XT - 4x Samsung 980Pro 1TB - 1x Samsung 870 Evo 1TB - 1x SanDisc 120GB SSD - Heatkiller IV - MoRa3-360LT@9x120mm Noctua F12 - Corsair AXi-1200 - TiR5-Pro - Warthog Hotas - Saitek Combat Pedals - Asus XG27ACG QHD 180Hz - Corsair K70 RGB Pro - Win11 Pro/Linux - Phanteks Evolv-X
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