NVME transfer

[cowasaki]

I have a 500Gb Samsung 970 PRO NVME drive and a motherboard that only has one NVME slot.  I thought it had two but the other is M.2 sata or something.....  Anyhow I just bought a 1Tb Samsung 970 PRO NVME and I own a USB3.1 enclosure.  The drive works in the enclosure but I want to transfer the 500Gb to the 1Tb and make that the boot drive.

Anybody done this and have a free software package that does so?  I've just wasted hours using a free package that runs as a linux dist.  It doesn't read the NVME slot so I had to install a spare 2Tb sata drive into a bay and the 500Gb in the enclosure.  It copied the 500Gb to the 2Tb drive but then will not copy it to the 1Tb plus the 2Tb will not boot.

It would be a right pain having to re-install everything!

[PKTKS]

It happens quite a bit more frequently than it *should*..

Some reasons may be speculated...
- THE BIOS of  *THIS* MOBO is the first culprit.
- you *may*  try to reflash this BIOS *IF* the fab care to update this..
 (instead of forcing their consumers to buy a new MOBO - very frequently too)
- The **COMBINATION** of the particular chip inside your NVM device and drivers
 just will not work.. may be some day  may be never.. - it also happens mostly
 because this new tech is just too messy and they give a shit to preserver compat.
 (again you/we are forced to "upgrade" to "MODERN" (i love this word  ) ones..

For sure the *BEST* try shot you have is a recent linux kernel.. 

AND THE BEST OPTION IS TO COMPILE IT YOURSELF..
**TARGET THE SPECIFIC CHIPS YOU NEED TO FIND INSIDE THE SLOTS...**

A bit time consuming even for experienced folks..
but definitively the best option

Almost impractical for newbies or casual users..
(most they use *BUNTUs and ready made kernels..)

I have being there .. and for now.. I AM JUST GOING SAFE W/SSDs
in which  libata  is the unique concern..  higher speeds require some tweaks.

Paul

[cowasaki]

It happens quite a bit more frequently than it *should*..

Some reasons may be speculated...
- THE BIOS of  *THIS* MOBO is the first culprit.
- you *may*  try to reflash this BIOS *IF* the fab care to update this..
 (instead of forcing their consumers to buy a new MOBO - very frequently too)
- The **COMBINATION** of the particular chip inside your NVM device and drivers
 just will not work.. may be some day  may be never.. - it also happens mostly
 because this new tech is just too messy and they give a shit to preserver compat.
 (again you/we are forced to "upgrade" to "MODERN" (i love this word  ) ones..

For sure the *BEST* try shot you have is a recent linux kernel.. 

AND THE BEST OPTION IS TO COMPILE IT YOURSELF..
**TARGET THE SPECIFIC CHIPS YOU NEED TO FIND INSIDE THE SLOTS...**

A bit time consuming even for experienced folks..
but definitively the best option

Almost impractical for newbies or casual users..
(most they use *BUNTUs and ready made kernels..)

I have being there .. and for now.. I AM JUST GOING SAFE W/SSDs
in which  libata  is the unique concern..  higher speeds require some tweaks.

Paul

The motherboard is an MSI 370 pro? with the latest BIOS.   I'm an experienced user although not as much recently.  I have not had much call for linux so re-compiling it for a specific task would probably take me longer than re-installing everything.  The thing is that I have got everything working just as I want and I was hoping to just stick the NVME into slot 2 and mount in as the user folder but alas the other slot isn't the right type.

[PKTKS]

Sounds good...

*IF*  you can make it *just work*     then go with it...

Higher speeds are tricky and booting from NVMs are also
problematic..  The introduction of the whole UEFI thing
made a huge unnecessary mess ...

sometimes the NVM firmware will not boot on specific MOBOs.
while a decent crafted MBR partition may succeed..

This  "new modern"  UEFI thing serves more the parts which
lock  the EFI partition and UEFI image keeping users outside..

You can in time compile a decent kernel with the necessary
driver for the specific chipset(s) used.

Until then.. just go w/the best working solution..
I have being there and extracted these rudimentary conclusions

UEFI sucks. 

Paul

[cowasaki]

Sounds good...

*IF*  you can make it *just work*     then go with it...

Higher speeds are tricky and booting from NVMs are also
problematic..  The introduction of the whole UEFI thing
made a huge unnecessary mess ...

sometimes the NVM firmware will not boot on specific MOBOs.
while a decent crafted MBR partition may succeed..

This  "new modern"  UEFI thing serves more the parts which
lock  the EFI partition and UEFI image keeping users outside..

You can in time compile a decent kernel with the necessary
driver for the specific chipset(s) used.

Until then.. just go w/the best working solution..
I have being there and extracted these rudimentary conclusions

UEFI sucks. 

Paul

The NVME has worked faultlessly since it was installed 18 months or so ago.  It is also blisteringly fast but I couldn't afford a bigger one than 500Gb at the time because I was buying lots of stuff.  Anyway I luckily got hold of a 3070 and just picked up a used i9 processor then a 1Tb 970 NVME drive.  I still have some space on the 500Gb one but a lot of programs insist on installing in C:\ and use folders stuck on that drive too so upgrading it to 1Tb would be ideal.  I was then going to stick the 500Gb in the other socket till I found I couldn't.  I will now use it via USB3.1 as a straight file backup.

I will find a way!

[cowasaki]

Well I've managed to copy the 500Gb drive onto the 1Tb drive and it's all working fine.  I'm typing this on the computer now.  Unfortunately I now have a 1Tb drive with a large space at the end....

Now all I need to do it extend the partition which can be done with Disc Management in Windows......  DONE

In case anyone else sees this I used Macrium Reflect and it just worked.

[gmb42]

Probably too late now, but most SSD vendors provide their own data migration tools for this exact purpose.  Usually the destination drive must be from the vendor but they don't care what the source drive is.

Samsung's tools can be found here, click on "Data Migration".

[cowasaki]

Probably too late now, but most SSD vendors provide their own data migration tools for this exact purpose.  Usually the destination drive must be from the vendor but they don't care what the source drive is.

Samsung's tools can be found here, click on "Data Migration".

Thanks for that.  Yes too late for me but anyone who searches can see that link.  I remember years ago getting software to do that from a vendor.  My issue was due to constraints with hardware/bios/software more than anything!  It was a right pain but it's working great now and I ordered a PCI-E to NVME board from Amazon for under £15 which should allow me to make use of the old SSD as well.

[Marco]

You'll probably need to thoroughly wipe the old NVME drive with an USB based bootdisk, windows doesn't like two disks with the same disk and partition UUIDs in the system at the same time.

I used Clonezilla to clone one NVME drive with Windows on it to another recently, which worked fine for me. If you boot clonezilla into shell, you can use it to wipe a SSD too. To wipe the old SSD first do lsblk to find the device name, then "sudo blkdiscard -f /dev/X" where X is the device name. It's basically a full disk trim, nothing gets written.