- Mar 13, 2012
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SSD prices are the mirror opposite of GPU prices -- absurd, but absurdly low. Picked up a 980 pro 1TB NVME m.2 drive refurb off of Best Buy. I've done this before with BB; the drives are usually never used or used so little it makes no difference. My guess is that it's normies who don't know the difference between form factors, and realize too late they don't have a m.2 port. Anyway...
One of my kid's rigs is running a WD SN550 1TB drive as their one and only drive. This is one of those DRAM-less models that the interweb says are best used for back-up/game drive storage. It was what I had at the time I built the rig in 2020. So, I figure I'd put this Samsung drive into the aforementioned rig. It seems a shame to me to relegate the faster drive to being the backup, so I'd like to do the ol' switcheroo. 980 pro to boot, SN550 for backup storage. It's a Ryzen 3600 system, but I can't remember if I used a mobo that supports PCIE 4.0. I wonder how big of an impact that makes, if any.
I want to avoid doing a fresh install. I used an OEM key for Windows, so I'd rather not have to struggle with reactivation if that's still a ah heck. Not to mention, I'd also like to not have to re-do all the customizations.
How would you do it? I'm vaguely aware that there's cloning software out there. Would I simply put the new faster drive on the secondary m.2 slot, and run the cloning software? Then switch them physically, boot from new faster drive in the primary m.2 slot (it gets more lanes right?), and then format the old drive? To map it out:
1) Install 980 pro to available m.2
2) boot as normal, disk management to see the new 980 pro, run cloning software to it
3) swap physical location of drives
4) boot from new drive (hopefully the system doesn't "look" to boot from the previous drive here)
5) format SN550
Am I missing anything?
One of my kid's rigs is running a WD SN550 1TB drive as their one and only drive. This is one of those DRAM-less models that the interweb says are best used for back-up/game drive storage. It was what I had at the time I built the rig in 2020. So, I figure I'd put this Samsung drive into the aforementioned rig. It seems a shame to me to relegate the faster drive to being the backup, so I'd like to do the ol' switcheroo. 980 pro to boot, SN550 for backup storage. It's a Ryzen 3600 system, but I can't remember if I used a mobo that supports PCIE 4.0. I wonder how big of an impact that makes, if any.
I want to avoid doing a fresh install. I used an OEM key for Windows, so I'd rather not have to struggle with reactivation if that's still a ah heck. Not to mention, I'd also like to not have to re-do all the customizations.
How would you do it? I'm vaguely aware that there's cloning software out there. Would I simply put the new faster drive on the secondary m.2 slot, and run the cloning software? Then switch them physically, boot from new faster drive in the primary m.2 slot (it gets more lanes right?), and then format the old drive? To map it out:
1) Install 980 pro to available m.2
2) boot as normal, disk management to see the new 980 pro, run cloning software to it
3) swap physical location of drives
4) boot from new drive (hopefully the system doesn't "look" to boot from the previous drive here)
5) format SN550
Am I missing anything?