Easy upgrade of your M.2 NVME drive (boot partition)

One of the best upgrades for your computer is the storage.  If you are still using SATA drives, then consider an SSD replacement.  Most new computers already come with SSD storage.  In some cases, the solid-state storage is using the newer M.2 NVME devices.  The downside is that a new computer may not have the capacity or best performance you desire. 

The Samsung 990 PRO is one of the fastest M.2 SSD options on the market!  To get the max performance, you will want to confirm your computer has PCIe 4.0, but it is backward compatible to previous PCIe versions.

My home desktop was using a NVME 512GB SSD that came with it at purchase (C partition).  Recently, I ran out of space on my larger SATA drive.  I needed a solution.

After some research, I chose the Samsung 990 PRO during this year’s Amazon Prime event.  Here are the steps to upgrade your boot drive for more speed and storage in less than 1 hour!

Required items:

  • Windows 10/11 desktop computer with an existing NVME drive/slot

  • NVME to USB cradle

  • Samsung 990 PRO (I bought the 2TB model)

  • Screwdriver (my NVME-USB cradle came with a screwdriver)

Steps

  1. Backup

    Yes, always make a backup before you do anything!

  2. Download and install the Samsung Magician software.

    The privacy policy on this software is not very good.  They collect a lot of information about your system, and I uninstalled it once I knew everything was working as expected.

  3. Install the Samsung 990 PRO in the NVME cradle and connect to your computer.

  4. Close all unnecessary programs.  You do not want your system to change/update during the imaging process.

  5. Launch the Samsung Magician software and follow the instructions to clone your existing C (boot) partition to the new Samsung PRO SSD.  The software will warn you that it will shut down the computer after the cloning process is complete.

  6. After completion and shut down, perform the hardware replacement of your existing NVME drive with the new drive.  This is probably the hardest part depending on your desktop computer.  You will need to access the inside of the chassis and should remove power for safety.

  7. Once complete, turn on the computer and you are done!

Final Points

  • The Samsung Magician software will automatically use the entire drive for your C partition.  If you want to “shrink” the size so you can create other partitions, you can do so using the Computer Management console (Disk Management).

  • You can run the Samsung Magician software to check the drive performance and run diagnostics.  I did this for the first week then removed the software from my computer.

  • If you are migrating other partitions to the new drive, I recommend closing all programs using the partition then use Disk Management to create the new partition and assign/swap drive letters.  Then, copy the data from the old to the new partition.  Reboot and your software programs should see the same drive letter and be oblivious to the fact it is now on a different drive!

Good luck!

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