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Migrating Windows 10 to a M.2 Drive in a XPS 8900
Please, if anyone knows the following can you share:
I need to know the steps to migrate the Windows 10 to the M.2 SSD drive and then what the steps are to configure the XPS 8900 (recent BIOS) to boot off the M.2 Drive?
Thanks,
kgan
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March 27th, 2017 11:00
So my Samsung EVO 850 M.2 arrived today and I successfully installed it. I'll answer my own questions:
1) I logged a support ticket with Samsung with the following question "I just bought a Samsung EVO M.2 50GB 850 SSD and was wondering if I should configure it as AHCI or RAID". The answer I received was "Our drives can work in either set up but you will get the best performance in an AHCI environment.". I did follow the steps in the link I quoted above to change from RAID to ACHI successfully after breaking the RAID setup within Intel RST.
2) I successfully used Macrium Reflect Free Edition to clone my primary disk. I made sure I only had the new SSD and my Boot drive connected. All other SATA drives were disconnected from the motherboard. I also disconnected the network before cloning. There were 5 partitions and I made sure all were brought over. Since I was going from a 2TB drive to a 500GB drive, I had to shrink my C: drive. I used the following tutorial: https://youtu.be/Jh4uRhWwZT0
3) Once I had cloned my drive, I powered off and disconnected my legacy primary HDD, so the only SATA drive connected was the M.2. I entered the BIOS. I left it in Secure Boot, and left it UEFI. In the Boot Sequence a new entry appeared called "UEFI: Samsung SSD 850 EVO M.2 500GB" . I changed the boot sequence to put that on top of the other entry called "Windows Boot Manager" using the arrows on the top right. Then I booted fine with the new SSD. Once I checked that everything was working fine, I powered off and reconnected all drives. I switched the connection from my old Boot Drive which was using the Blue SATA Port and swapped it with another HDD just to make sure it wouldn't revert to booting from that old drive. I'm not sure if that was needed. Then I rebooted and all drives showed up and i verified that I did boot from the SSD. I had to shuffle some drive letters around to my liking using Disk Manager but all is well.
My Windows boot time dropped from 1min 20 sec to about 20 sec.
ejn63
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October 17th, 2016 16:00
It depends largely on the existing configuration - single drive, RAID drives, Intel RST cached?
gsman007
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October 18th, 2016 03:00
I currently have 2 internal drives installed in the XPS, 1T drive (C:) as my primary windows drive and a 3 TB drive (F:) as my storage drive.
ejn63
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October 18th, 2016 04:00
Are the drives in RAID or AHCI mode?
gsman007
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October 18th, 2016 05:00
RAID
ejn63
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October 18th, 2016 07:00
You should simply be able to connect the second drive to the system. Then go into the RAID configuration and set up a RAID 1 array (usually it's CTRL-i to enter, should show on screen during bootup).
You may want to disconnect (temporarily) your storage drive while doing this so you don't run the risk of making an error that will over-write it.
gsman007
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October 18th, 2016 09:00
is this done when you get into the Bios (F2)? If so then where do I go to set up the RAID 1 array?
ejn63
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October 18th, 2016 17:00
www.dell.com/.../en
kgan
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March 25th, 2017 07:00
I have the same question, but in my case I have a small 32GB Liteon SSD in the M.2 as an accelleration cache using Intel Rapid Storage Technology. I want to replace it with a Samsung 850 EVO M.2 500GB SSD (MZ-N5E500BW). I have already disabled the Intel RST configuration and can now see the Liteon in Disk Management (Disk 8). I also have 4 total HDD's, so all SATA ports are filled (Disks 0-3).
I have a few questions:
- I have read that SSD's are better configured as AHCI and not RAID. Is this true and how / when should I make this change? I assume it's one of the first things I should do. I believe following these steps should do it: triplescomputers.com/.../
- Can I use something like Macrium Reflect Free Edition to clone my existing Disk0 to the new Samsung or should I do a fresh OS install? I created a windows 10 recovery USB when I first got the machine 1 year ago. If I need to do a fresh OS install, can I use that or should I create a new one?
- I still didn't see the steps needed to boot off the SSD. I am used to legacy BIOS' and the 8900 has a UEFI BIOS. What settings should I use for Secure Boot, Legacy Boot, Legacy ROM for the 8900 to automatically boot off the M.2 and not the original HDD without having to hit F12 each time. I plan on disconnecting the original HDD for the first install, but because it's connected the the Blue Port (Primary Boot SATA0) and all other SATA ports are filled, I'm afraid that it will revert to booting from the HDD once it's reconnected. How do I prevent that?
Thanks.