Hi @gibbylinks welcome to this user to user discussion forum. This is not Dell Support.
Thanks for the link, this is a good M.2 NVMe drive. So now you clone this drive to be a copy of your existing drive. Usually the better vendors such as Western Digital provide the cloning application with their NVMe drive. Register your drive with its serial number to get extended warranty, Then go to How to Automatically Clone a disk with Acronis True Image for Western Digital software, and get your free cloning application. All of the cloning instructions are on their webpage (so no need to repeat them). Acronis True Image is an excellent application, take your time to follow/understand the before and after picture prompts, then you get it right first time.
Now that you have a shiny new Area-51m R2, think about your disaster recovery plan. To include, create another clone to be held in reserve. Then if somehow your original NVMe OS (C:) drive becomes unrecoverable, just swap in the second NVMe OS (C:) drive to get your system up and running in minutes.
Please click on Kudos to say thank you for response from another user. Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you.
Hi @gibbylinks please note Area-51m R2 Storage interface is PCIe NVMe Gen3 x4, so a PCIe NVMe Gen4 x4 should hopefully be backwards compatible, but will only give Gen3 read/write performance. You may want to change your drive order if this was not intended.
For anyone else considering doing this, a word of warning. When ordering the WD Black I made the mistake of ordering the one with the heatsink, and it won't fit it's too big.
crimsom
7 Technologist
•
6.1K Posts
1
February 5th, 2021 07:00
Hi @gibbylinks welcome to this user to user discussion forum. This is not Dell Support.
Thanks for the link, this is a good M.2 NVMe drive. So now you clone this drive to be a copy of your existing drive. Usually the better vendors such as Western Digital provide the cloning application with their NVMe drive. Register your drive with its serial number to get extended warranty, Then go to How to Automatically Clone a disk with Acronis True Image for Western Digital software, and get your free cloning application. All of the cloning instructions are on their webpage (so no need to repeat them). Acronis True Image is an excellent application, take your time to follow/understand the before and after picture prompts, then you get it right first time.
Now that you have a shiny new Area-51m R2, think about your disaster recovery plan. To include, create another clone to be held in reserve. Then if somehow your original NVMe OS (C:) drive becomes unrecoverable, just swap in the second NVMe OS (C:) drive to get your system up and running in minutes.
Please click on Kudos to say thank you for response from another user. Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you.
crimsom
7 Technologist
•
6.1K Posts
1
February 5th, 2021 07:00
Hi @gibbylinks please note Area-51m R2 Storage interface is PCIe NVMe Gen3 x4, so a PCIe NVMe Gen4 x4 should hopefully be backwards compatible, but will only give Gen3 read/write performance. You may want to change your drive order if this was not intended.
gibbylinks
1 Rookie
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40 Posts
0
February 5th, 2021 08:00
Thanks Crimson,
I intended to boot the machine up and make a windows recovery USB before I do anything "under the hood"
gibbylinks
1 Rookie
•
40 Posts
0
February 6th, 2021 08:00
Thanks for the advice Crimson.
For anyone else considering doing this, a word of warning. When ordering the WD Black I made the mistake of ordering the one with the heatsink, and it won't fit it's too big.
So taking on board Crimson's comment, I've returned it and ordered one of these instead https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08146TTP3/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
And my new Area 51m is amazing, really please with it, and the build quality is really good. Love that all the cables are labelled up inside too.
gibbylinks
1 Rookie
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40 Posts
0
February 6th, 2021 09:00
Oops, just noticed been typing Crimson, apologies @crimsom