Moving Win 10 to new M.2 drive

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Brian K
Posts: 2214
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:11 am
Location: NSW, Australia

Re: Moving Win 10 to new M.2 drive

Post by Brian K »

Logman,

Have you got Win10 on your Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD and it's booting in Legacy mode? Has the other Win10 been deleted?
Logman
Posts: 112
Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2015 6:10 pm

Re: Moving Win 10 to new M.2 drive

Post by Logman »

Thanks for that, I was going to try sliding but it gave some warning about the BIBM partition and I was hesitant to try it.
I just copied the old drive when I moved it, and didn't use scale to fit so maybe that's why.

TeraByte Support wrote:
> You would use scale to fit when copying and it would move it.
>
> After the fact, you slide it simply by booting the boot disk, going to
> maintenance / partition work and sliding it.
Logman
Posts: 112
Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2015 6:10 pm

Re: Moving Win 10 to new M.2 drive

Post by Logman »

Hi Brian,
Yes I have Win 10 in Legacy mode on the M2 drive.
When I copied the old drive to the new one, I just changed the boot order in the BIOS and everything worked fine.
I deleted the other Win 10 once I confirmed everything worked.
I have images of the old setup as a backup in case anything went wrong.
I was surprised I could use the NVMe drive in Legacy mode as I was under the impression it would only work with UEFI.
I checked the speed with Samsung's Magician software to see if it was running in x4 mode and it was.

Comparing it to the old Sata SSD the speeds were impressive

850 Evo 250GB Sata SSD: Sequential (Mb/s) = Read 545, Write 527 Random Read = 97,900 Write = 87,646

970 Evo 500GB M.2 : Sequential (Mb/s) = Read 3552, Write 2460 Random Read = 276,123 Write = 351,787


Brian K wrote:
> Logman,
>
> Have you got Win10 on your Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD and it's booting in Legacy
> mode? Has the other Win10 been deleted?
Brian K
Posts: 2214
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:11 am
Location: NSW, Australia

Re: Moving Win 10 to new M.2 drive

Post by Brian K »

Logman,

Thanks for that info. I thought it might not work but it did. DrT was advised he couldn't boot Win10 (MBR mode) from a NVMe SSD on his MB. Different MB I guess.

I have two 970 Evo M.2 NVMe SSDs but mine are 250 GB. The write speed is slower than yours. I only have one M.2 port on the MB so the second Evo is in a PCIe to M.2 adapter. Both have the same speed.

Edit... a mate has an expensive computer I helped setup. He has three 970 Pro M.2 NVMe SSDs. We did an IFL backup of a fresh Win10 (Entire drive image) from one Pro SSD to another Pro. It took 5 seconds.
AGH1965
Posts: 85
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2016 1:36 pm
Location: Netherlands

Re: Moving Win 10 to new M.2 drive

Post by AGH1965 »

Logman wrote:
> I just bought a Samsung 970 Evo NVMe M.2 500GB SSD and I want to move ( if
> possible ) the Win 10 installation currently on a Samsung SATA SSD 850 Evo
> 250GB drive.

Samsung's NVMe SSD Product FAQs webpage contains the following question + answer:

Q: "Can I move data from an HDD or SATA SSD to a Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD?"
A: "Yes. It is possible to clone a SATA HDD or SATA SSD to an NVMe SSD. Samsung, however, recommends performing a “clean install” of the OS and later transferring the desired non-executable files.

Because the registry information needed for NVMe SSDs is different from those of SATA HDDs or SSDs, a clean install helps to avoid unnecessary compatibility and performance issues that may arise from simply cloning a storage device."

So Samsung advises not to do so, but instead to perform a clean install. See: https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/m ... s-nvmessd/
Logman
Posts: 112
Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2015 6:10 pm

Re: Moving Win 10 to new M.2 drive

Post by Logman »

AGH1965 wrote:
>
> Samsung's NVMe SSD Product FAQs webpage contains the following question + answer:
>
> Q: "Can I move data from an HDD or SATA SSD to a Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD?"
> A: "Yes. It is possible to clone a SATA HDD or SATA SSD to an NVMe SSD. Samsung,
> however, recommends performing a “clean install” of the OS and later transferring the
> desired non-executable files.
>
> Because the registry information needed for NVMe SSDs is different from those of SATA
> HDDs or SSDs, a clean install helps to avoid unnecessary compatibility and
> performance issues that may arise from simply cloning a storage device."
>
> So Samsung advises not to do so, but instead to perform a clean install. See:
> https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/m ... s-nvmessd/

I installed the NVMe driver in Windows 10 and there has been no issues that I can see, I have had the same installation of W10 for more than a couple of years and doing a clean install would be a very last resort.

Runs Ubuntu and Linux Mint fine as well.

Thanks for the heads up tho
AGH1965
Posts: 85
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2016 1:36 pm
Location: Netherlands

Re: Moving Win 10 to new M.2 drive

Post by AGH1965 »

Logman wrote:
> I installed the NVMe driver in Windows 10

Most likely installing Samsung's own NVMe driver will correctly set all registry settings needed by the device. However, since the driver is not mandatory for Windows 10, some users may skip that step and that might result in using the device with non-optimal settings when not performing a clean install.
Logman
Posts: 112
Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2015 6:10 pm

Re: Moving Win 10 to new M.2 drive

Post by Logman »

AGH1965 wrote:
> Logman wrote:
> > I installed the NVMe driver in Windows 10
>
> Most likely installing Samsung's own NVMe driver will correctly set all registry
> settings needed by the device. However, since the driver is not mandatory for Windows
> 10, some users may skip that step and that might result in using the device with
> non-optimal settings when not performing a clean install.

That could be alright, I remember going to the Samsung site and reading up on NVMe and it said that their driver was recommended over Win10's so I installed that along with their software.
DrTeeth
Posts: 1289
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:58 pm

Re: Moving Win 10 to new M.2 drive

Post by DrTeeth »

On Sun, 5 May 2019 07:02:28 PDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
AGH1965 disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>Because the registry information needed for NVMe SSDs is different from those of SATA HDDs or SSDs, a clean install helps to avoid unnecessary compatibility and performance issues that may arise from simply cloning a storage device.

I beg to differ. Whenever I upgrade my hardware, I transfer my hard
drives to the new platform. I have had some OSs that have been on 3-4
different platforms without any issues. Windows and Linux have many
generic drivers to pick up new hardware so that the optimised drivers
can be installed at a later date. FWIW, I have never noticed any
significant performance increase of "proper" drivers over the generic
ones.
--
Cheers,

DrT

** Amateurs built the Ark, but professionals built the Titanic.**
AGH1965
Posts: 85
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2016 1:36 pm
Location: Netherlands

Re: Moving Win 10 to new M.2 drive

Post by AGH1965 »

DrTeeth wrote:
> On Sun, 5 May 2019 07:02:28 PDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
> AGH1965 disturbed my reverie and wrote...

Don't shoot the messenger. I just copied some information from the Samsung website to inform a user of a Samsung product.

DrTeeth wrote:
> I have never noticed any significant performance increase of
> "proper" drivers over the generic ones.

I have, but to be honest only once. The boot time of my Windows 7 system reduced significantly when I switched to using the Intel RST AHCI driver.
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