Cloning a Mini-PCIe boot drive on my Acer PC.

[kenhoran]

I’d would like to clone my PC’s SSD boot drive.

For one thing I’d like a little more space on my boot disk and two I’ve had my PC for several years and recently experienced some Mini-PCIe boot disk failures on some client’s PCs.

How can I do this without losing any data or a need to perform any extraordinary procedures?

Thanks in advance! Ken

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[Alex5723]

Create a full image backup (not clone) to external USB HDD and restore to the new drive.
Use the free Macrium Reflect software.

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GoneToPlaid

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[anonymous]

? says:

hi ken,

saw your dangling post so here’s what i do;

clonezilla or dd. i asked google and the usual suspects pop up (clone my PC SSD boot drive):

easeus, macrium reflect, acronis, there is also a howtogeek tutorial and several youtubes on the google.

also the search box here at woody’s will probably have loads of info on the subject…

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[mn–]

The Mini-PCIe part of it could be a problem though. True NVMe Mini-PCIe SSDs are quite uncommon so an appropriate replacement part might be hard to find – most of that form factor use mSATA signaling.

Also some motherboards are picky and only allow certain specific models of cards in Mini-PCIe. Don’t know why but seen various kinds of boot messages like “Unknown model of Mini-PCIe device detected. Mini-PCIe slot disabled”

There are adapter parts that can connect a m.2 NVMe SSD to Mini-PCIe, though. Might be easier to find those, but then you get to worry about physical dimensions… usually not much free space around the Mini-PCIe slots in laptops.

Of course this is much less of a problem if your drive is actually mSATA in Mini-PCIe form factor instead, or if your device can use that slot in mSATA mode.

Alex5723 wrote:

Create a full image backup (not clone) to external USB HDD and restore to the new drive.

… or some other storage device. Various applications can be used, that’s the easy part… if possibly a bit time-consuming.

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