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Author Topic: Upgrade Primary SSD  (Read 16511 times)

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mroilfield

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Upgrade Primary SSD
« on: March 20, 2022, 03:00:14 PM »
Hello all.

I currently have a DELL XPS 8940 with the system drive being a 128GB M.2 PCIe SSD. I would like to upgrade this to a 512GB drive.

What would be the best way to do this?
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Lisa_maree



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Re: Upgrade Primary SSD
« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2022, 04:22:27 PM »
Hi

Thankyou for using the forum, Do you have a USB drive you could use for a backup of the 128GB drive ?
If so then you could backup the drive then restore after installing the the replacement 500GB.

A program to consider is the free version of Todo backup. Using the System Backup option allows a full copy of the source drive and a restore to the new drive with a resize to use the full 500 GB.

to use the program download the free version, make recovery media then boot the computer from the recovery media, Select System backup. When the backup is finished. follow the guide on the Dell website to swap out the drive. Boot from the recovery media and then restore the backup.

If you haven't already brought the 500gb drive it would be a good idea to buy a drive with a heatsink or get a heat sink for your drive.
the M2 PCIe SSD run hot without a heatsink.

If you don't have a USB hard drive available then a PCIE card to M2 could be an option.
Something like this
ZoeRax NVME Pro Adapter M.2 NVME Pro SSD to PCIe 4.0

You could then have both drives in the computer and skip the backup to USB step.
Instead of TODO backup you could use the free software available from the new drives site.

 
 
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mroilfield

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Re: Upgrade Primary SSD
« Reply #2 on: March 21, 2022, 03:29:23 PM »
Thanks for the info. I will look into that.

Has anyone tried a NVMe to USB Adapter? Any thing to watch for when using those?
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Lisa_maree



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Re: Upgrade Primary SSD
« Reply #3 on: March 21, 2022, 10:59:58 PM »
The consideration with  NVMe to USB Adapter is the power requirements of the MVMe drive, this can be as high as 2 AMPS which is to much for a usb port. Also the transfer speed of the USB port with your computers usb3.0 ports you could expect a write speed of about 90MB/s and 480 MB/s or more on PCIe.


 
You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”
― John Bunyan