Copying Nvme

So in a moment of weakness and the frustration of my 8 year old laptop developing several issues while using it lately I have now got a secondhand laptop.

However it has a 120GB fairly slow nvme drive, I want to upgrade the nvme to something bigger and faster.

Now on a "normal" system with sata drives I would just mirror the drive however whats the process with nvme?

I can buy an adapter from Amazon to plug an nvme into the usb port but what is the best way to make an exact copy of the nvme drive, is it just the same process as copying a hard drive or is there anything I need to look out for?

Veeam do a nice backup/restore program, you install it, it dumps a backup of your drive out to an external device or network drive and creates a recovery CD/USB, you boot from that and then point it at the external/netowrk location, it then dumps that back on the new drive and injects whatever drivers etc are needed, once that's done, boot as normal, expand the C drive into the new free space, reboot and off you go..


Oh, and its free :D


https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoi...l?ad=downloads

Your new NVMe drive will also likely come with software to perform exactly this too. It's basically the same as for copying a boot hard drive.

Apologies, but sometimes a potentially stupid question is worth asking...

Are you certain it is an NVMe drive? Not an M.2 SATA drive? Just I haven't seen that many 120GB NVMe drives.


But back to the question, personally I would use it as an excuse to buy a USB to NVMe caddy. Then you can use the old drive as a really fast USB stick when finished.
Most SSDs come with transfer software, but avoid Corsair SSDs for this. Theirs is different, and bad.

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Originally Posted by kalniel

Your new NVMe drive will also likely come with software to perform exactly this too. It's basically the same as for copying a boot hard drive.

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Samsung drives are good for this..

External caddys are a must either way, you can then use the old drive as an external for, stuff..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix

Apologies, but sometimes a potentially stupid question is worth asking...

Are you certain it is an NVMe drive? Not an M.2 SATA drive? Just I haven't seen that many 120GB NVMe drives.

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No idea mate, this is what the current drive comes up as : Hynix 128GB BC501 NVMe M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3

Quote:

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Originally Posted by [GSV]Trig

Veeam do a nice backup/restore program, you install it, it dumps a backup of your drive out to an external device or network drive and creates a recovery CD/USB, you boot from that and then point it at the external/netowrk location, it then dumps that back on the new drive and injects whatever drivers etc are needed, once that's done, boot as normal, expand the C drive into the new free space, reboot and off you go..


Oh, and its free :D


https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoi...l?ad=downloads

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Cheers mate will take a look

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kalniel

Your new NVMe drive will also likely come with software to perform exactly this too. It's basically the same as for copying a boot hard drive.

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I did think that might be the case but never done an nvme drive before and wasn't sure if anything was different

If you are just cloning to a larger drive its easy, there are a few things you might want to be aware of though..

Newer faster drives can run hotter, this can push thermals in the machine to a point where it affects the fan's.
Some drives that are hot arent suitable for external caddys without a fan (Samsung 970 Evo+ gets toasty).
If you are cloning to a newer machine, it can work as long as the differences in CPU arent too much, I've just had to inject newer drivers into a clone from an 8th Gen i7 to an 11th Gen as the recovery wouldn't see the drive in the new machine.

Generally though its a case of clone, swap drive over, recover image to new drive, expand partition into extra space.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jonj1611

No idea mate, this is what the current drive comes up as : Hynix 128GB BC501 NVMe M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3

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OK, that's clearly NVMe then. Damn that's a slow SSD!

https://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/h...128GB&id=22841

211MB/s write speed, even the worst QLC drives will be like lightspeed after that :D


Edit: Trig is right that fast drives can get hot. A WD SN550 can be picked up pretty cheap right now after they did the QLC swap and trashed their reputation, but even the 1TB drive pulls 3.5W max (2TB is 3.9W). I've found the WD drive transfer program pretty decent when I did a SATA to NVMe swap.

My thoughts exactly which is why I am changing it :) And its going to the same machine, just having a larger, faster drive

So sticking with a budget, was looking at this for £43 https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Blue-SN5...dp/B07YFF3JCN/

Though states 3.5w max, my current one is 2w. Am I likely to see any temp issues in reality? Non gaming laptop

Seems to be a total OEM drive. Couldn't find the Hynix spec sheet, but NBC did review it and somehow managed to get the specs:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/SK-Hyn....477150.0.html

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The SK hynix BC501 HFM512GDJTNG is a mid range PCIe M.2 2280 SSD. It is specified at 1600 MB/s read and 860 MB/s write and 3 W reading, 3.5 W writing. Idle it consumes 40 mW and in L1.2 state 5mW.

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Although that was for the 500GB version (looks like that write speed is x4, so does it follow that the 128GB has only 400 MB/s read too?)

At 3 W and 3.5 W seems power hungry enough for the poor performance.

Yes the write speed is about 400mb/s, think its a bit less than that actually

Don't think I will worry too much about power draw, my laptop has many variations and the top one which has exactly the same housing comes with a 1TB ssd which I believe draws 4W peak

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jonj1611

So sticking with a budget, was looking at this for £43 https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Blue-SN5...dp/B07YFF3JCN/

Though states 3.5w max, my current one is 2w. Am I likely to see any temp issues in reality? Non gaming laptop

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I can't imagine you would. These things idle at next to nothing, and spend most of their time idle unless you are doing something *really* storage intensive.

I presume the laptop had options above 128GB when new, and as Kompukare says the larger drives from that range were 3.5W

Now if you were looking at something like a WD Black drive, those suckers have an optional heatsink. But the Blue drives tend to be quite cool running and hence my first thought.

The 500GB model is fine, I've used them in the past. I only mentioned the 1TB model as it seems the best value at 14.5GB/£, compared to the 500GB at 11.4GB/£, but if you have no use for the extra storage then it isn't a saving is it :D

Edit: Shame the 570 isn't in stock yet: https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-g...sd#WDS500G3B0C

In the end only took a few minutes but I had to use Macrium Reflect as the WD software wouldn't detect the drive. Likely down to the external nvme adapter I was using