Replacing System Drive [Solved]

[Bill Phillips]

It appears that I need to upgrade my System Drive (Studio (C:). Is there any way to do that without reinstalling Windows and the 300 programs I have installed? Or if not what's the best way to minimize the effort?  What I'm planning is to replace the NVMe drive on my ASUS X99-DELUXE II MB with a larger, probably 1TB version. I'd just like to make that as efficient and painless as possible. I'd like to keep the System on the MB NVMe for performance reasons. A couple of ideas I have that might help:

1. Add or upgrade one of the two existing SSD drives and temporarily transfer the system to that that drive and then back to the new NVMe.
2. Upgrade the existing NVMe (F:) drive installed on a PCIe board and temporarily transfer the system to that drive and then back to the new NVMe.

I'm also soliciting suggestions for freeing up space on the existing System drive, but I don't believe that there's anything on this drive that can be moved or deleted. I built this PC myself back in 2016 and at the time the 250 GB BPX NVMe (which measures as 222 GB) seemed like a good idea. However, since then I've installed lots of programs mostly Cakewalk related and they tend to polk lots of data in the Program Data (53 GB), and User AppData (5 + 20 GB) and Documents (25 GB) folders. Other Drives: (See screenshot 3).

1. F: Cakewalk projects and audio files
2. G: Cakewalk recording content and 3rd party plugins and media (but Cakewalk and other programs have installed some stuff on the System drive)
3. H: Local OneDrive storage but most files are cloud only
4.  O: No Internet dual-boot (no longer in use)
5. P: No Internet dual boot Cakewalk recording content and 3rd party plugins and media (no longer in use)

Thanks for any suggestions.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Bill Phillips
Solved

[Promidi]

1.  I think so.  Mine was a different situation to I can not say from experience.   I just checked a recent image file and all partitions show up in there.

2. I just used an image file to an external TB USB drive and restored from that..

3. Yes, that was my experience.  I just had to reactivate this and that.

4. I used O&O DiskImage Pro and EaseUS Partition Master.   There are others.

As I converted from Legacy to UEFI BIOS there were more things I had to do - like convert the system drive from MBT to GTP, create the UEFI partition.  It looks like you won't have to worry about that as the image should already contain these. 

What ever you choose, make sure it can create a bootable CD to run from

[Promidi]

46 minutes ago, Bill Phillips said:

It appears that I need to upgrade my System Drive (Studio (C:). Is there any way to do that without reinstalling Windows and the 300 programs I have installed?

 

When I needed to change my system drive, I used imagining software do do this.  There are many on the market.

I used software that lets you create a bootable CD containing the imagining software.  Then I booted to that CD to do the transfer between drives.

As a precaution, I deactivated all software iLok plugins before the transfer and then reactivated them when Windows booted with the new drive.

I also had to reactivate some plugns (XLN, IKM, etc) and software (Magix stuff, etc) that are tied to the hardware.

Good luck.

[Bill Phillips]

3 minutes ago, Promidi said:

When I needed to change my system drive, I used imagining software do do this.  There are many on the market.

I used software that lets you create a bootable CD containing the imagining software.  Then I booted to that CD to do the transfer between drives.

As a precaution, I deactivated all software iLok plugins before the transfer and then reactivated them when Windows booted with the new drive.

I also had to reactivate some plugns (XLN, IKM, etc) and software (Magix stuff, etc) that are tied to the hardware.

Good luck.

Thanks. This sounds like  a good approach. However,  I've tried (though not recently) and don't recall ever successfully using imaging software; but I'm certainly willing to give it another try. I do have some questions: 

1. Does the imaging software create the 100 MB EFI System & 500 MB Recovery partitions on either side of the System partition? 

2. Will it work with NVMe drives? If yes, looks like I'll need an external M.2 to USB adapter which seem to be available and affordable. I only have two M.2 NVMe slots, the system drive slot on the MB and the F: drive on a PCIe card. 

3. Will it maintain the complete registry along with the AppData, Program Data and Documents files required for the 300 programs to work?

4. Can you recommend a Imaging software product? 

[Bill Phillips]

@Promidi thank you very much. I'm going to give that a try once I select a new NVMe drive.

[Bill Phillips]

On 2/9/2022 at 10:35 PM, Promidi said:

1.  I think so.  Mine was a different situation to I can not say from experience.   I just checked a recent image file and all partitions show up in there.

2. I just used an image file to an external TB USB drive and restored from that..

3. Yes, that was my experience.  I just had to reactivate this and that.

4. I used O&O DiskImage Pro and EaseUS Partition Master.   There are others.

As I converted from Legacy to UEFI BIOS there were more things I had to do - like convert the system drive from MBT to GTP, create the UEFI partition.  It looks like you won't have to worry about that as the image should already contain these. 

What ever you choose, make sure it can create a bootable CD to run from

Here's what I did having learned what I needed to do from @Promidi:

1.  I found and watched How to clone NVMe SSD to new or larger NVMe SSD (Easy Step by Step Tutorial) 
2. I purchased the NVMe External Case recommended in the video and a Crucial P5 1TB NMVe
3. I also downloaded and installed Macrium Reflect Free disk imaging software recommended in the video.
4. Following the instructions in the video I cloned and replaced my existing 250GB NVMe SSD with the 1TB NVMe.
5. For me the instructions in the video for extending the System (C:) partition didn't work because of the 500MB Recovery partition following the System (C:) partition. So, I purchased and downloaded EaseUS Partition Manager that @Promidi uses and followed Instructions on EaseUS website to move and extend the system drive. I found videos showing deleting the recovery partition and showing manually imaging and moving the recovery partion but decided to use EaseUS instead.

Hope this is useful to others with the same problem. Thanks again @Promidi. A screenshot of my replacement 1TB disk 3 including the extended (C:) drive is attached.