Solved Restore Macrium image

Hey guys I am getting a bigger nvme (240gb to 500gb), the 240gb is windows boot. My question is, my mobo has 2 nvme slots, can I just restore a backup image to the new drive (500gb), then within macrium or bios do I set the new drive as boot?

I assume within the bios I would choose the new drive, but would that affect the old windows install on the old drive or would it ignore it and just boot from the new? I just want to format the old drive and use it for other stuff.

I am assuming (dangerous!) it would just ignore it.

Dwarfr66 said:

Hey guys I am getting a bigger nvme (240gb to 500gb), the 240gb is windows boot. My question is, my mobo has 2 nvme slots, can I just restore a backup image to the new drive (500gb), then within macrium or bios do I set the new drive as boot?

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YES.

Also, if you use the Macrium bootable Rescue Media to restore the image to the new drive... it also has a tool called "Fix Windows boot problems", ...in case that's needed.




AFTER you restore the image to the new drive... you can use Minitools Partition Wizard (bootable), to clean Windows off the old drive. Or you can clean the old drive using the command prompt that's also in the Macrium bootable Rescue Media.



Minitools Partition Wizard bootable, ISO image...
This is a great tool, to have, even if you don't need it for this operation.

Thanks very much, yes I always have the Rescue Media sitting in my drawer.

Ok just wanted to make sure everything in my brain was on the same track!

Dwarfr66 said:

Thanks very much, yes I always have the Rescue Media sitting in my drawer.

Ok just wanted to make sure everything in my brain was on the same track!

Click to expand...

You're on the right track.
Generally, it's best to make backups from within Windows, and to always do your restores from the bootable media.
Because... the bootable media gives access to the command prompt and to the "Fix Windows boot problems" tool.
With those two things... there's hardly any disaster you can't recover from.

Well... except for roaring fires, grenades, or small nuclear devices.

FYI, When restoring a smaller drive to a larger one, during the restore process, with Macrium size the partitions on the target drive accordingly to use the additional space. This prevents having to do manual allocation later where you would run into problems trying to extend partitions into non adjacent space. If done correctly, Macrium can do it for you during restore. There are several methods to do this. Method A is by far the easiest and most straightforward. (Note-when it refers to resize control it means drop source partitions onto target drive and drag the slider bar to make the partition larger, ie the C: partition
Step 7 in following Macrium article.

I do not think it will apply to you with that Asus Rogue mobo but I'll mention what happened to me if anyone else reading this thread runs into an issue.
I recently did the same thing, restore one nvme to a larger one in a second NVME slot. When restore was complete neither drive would boot. I tried everything; change in bios, Macrium "fix windows boot problems", dism. Nothing worked. In my case I also had a large HDD installed that I use for storage.

Come to find out this Dell Proprietary Motherboard supports only certain configurations with multiple drives installed.
So if anyone gets no boot and normal methods to fix it don't work, check your motherboard specifications.

Thanks to all you guys that replied.

Yeah I had to resize 4 years ago from a 120gb Samsung SSD to my now 240gb drive.

Something else to consider with multiple M.2 slots on the motherboard. Generally the top slot get it's connection via the CPU PCIe lanes with secondary slot(s) coming from the Chipset PCIe lanes. It's always better for the OS drive to be coming off the CPU PCIe lanes vs the Chipset PCIe lanes. So when you're done Restoring an image or simply Cloning the boot drive the next step is to move the new drive to the primary M.2 slot.

According to my Mobo manual the bottom slot is the primary.

Dwarfr66 said:

According to my Mobo manual the bottom slot is the primary.

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Assuming that M.2_1 is the primary, it is the slot nearest the CPU socket. (See page 1-12 of the downloadable manual.) That's typical. (Maybe because it gets its PCI-E lanes from the CPU.)

The manual is a little confusing.

Although the bottom slot, while labeled M.2_2, runs at PCIe gen 4, twice as fast as the top slot.

Scott said:

Although the bottom slot, while labeled M.2_2, runs at PCIe gen 4, twice as fast as the top slot.

View attachment 63297

View attachment 63298

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No. According to your screenshot m.2_2 runs x4 ( that means 4 lanes ) pcie 3.0

m.2_1 runs x2 ( that means 2 lanes ) pcie 3.0

It is possible to attach a gen 4 nvme disk to either slot. It should work but it will only have 2 or 4 lanes of pcie 3.0.