I'm in love - with Samsung SSD's and their Data Migration

[Chevy-SS]

In the last couple of months I have upgraded the HD's in two desktops from mechanical to Samsung SSD. I used the FREE Samsung software (Data Migration) and it absolutely couldn't have been easier. This software clones your existing HD onto the new SSD, and then you simply take out the old HD (or SSD or whatever) and install the new SSD, and it should boot right up, with everything just like you left it.

It's absolutely wonderful, because there is nothing I hate more than having to do a complete re-install, starting with the system disk, and then all the drivers, and then all software, ugh, it's a horrid, mind-numbing task.

You can buy a new Samsung 1TB SSD on Amazon for $60 measly bucks, which is more than enough for most of us. I ended up buying another one, simply as a full backup. I cloned my new SSD onto this even-newer SSD, and now have complete backup ready to install if needed. Of course, I backup my individual files regularly.

Bottom line, these are great times for cheap and fast storage. I think my first Mac had like a 1MB HD, hahahaha. Now I have a million times more!

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

That is pretty nice.

I've never used the included software. I usually just use any number of software I've collected over the years to clone drives. ( Usually these days it's dd on a Linux rescue drive)

One thing that is always a pain though, is to convert old MBR style windows installs to EFI installs that will boot from an NVME drive.

Will it do that for you, or do you still have to manually convert windows when going from an old sata drive to NVME?

 

[ChoGGi]

Manually I believe.

 

[Chevy-SS]

......One thing that is always a pain though, is to convert old MBR style windows installs to EFI installs that will boot from an NVME drive.......

OK, anyone who totally understands that sentence is a true Geek Computer God.......................

 

[Zepher]

The one and only time I used Samsung Magician to clone my drive it failed, so I just went and fired up Paragon's Migrate OS to SSD software which I have used since 2012 and have done hundreds of "clones" with only one failure.
The program used to be standalone for $20 but has been incorporated into its Hard Disk Suite which costs $80.
I like how you can deselect files and folders you don't want to include in the migration, if the new drive happens to be smaller than the old drive and all of the data won't fit, you can deselect the stuff that doesn't fit.
Back in 2012 when I got my first 128GB SSD, I was trying to clone my 200GB windows partition from my WD 1TB Black.
There was only 80GB in use on the 200GB OS partition but no cloning program at the time would clone it since it looked at partition size only and 200GB doesn't fit on a 128GB.
That is when I bought Paragon's Migrate OS to SSD, it did it just fine since it doesn't do a clone, it does a migration and makes the new volume bootable and does all the necessary stuff required for SSD's, like setting TRIM and anything else.

 

[pendragon1]

most ssds has something similar and usually as easy to use...
make sure your firmware is up to date.

OK, anyone who totally understands that sentence is a true Geek Computer God.......................

its how you move from legacy mode to uefi mode without reinstalling windows and only take a few minutes.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

OK, anyone who totally understands that sentence is a true Geek Computer God.......................

Lol.

So, PC's traditionally booted by having the BIOS point to a small section in the first few sectors of a drive called the "Master Boot Record".

It was a relatively simple system, and worked fairly well, but it did have some shortcomings, particularly if you are a device maker that want's to cryptographically lock down users ability to boot alternate operating systems. (in the name of security, of course) The MBR could sometimes get accidentally overwritten, resulting in boot problems that were difficult for the typical user to fix (but pretty trivial for a seasoned enthusiast)

UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) was developed in order to address these "problems" starting in the 90's. MBR booting was pretty entrenched though, so rollout was slow. It wasn't until maybe ~2011 UEFI was supported by typical motherboards, but even then most people didn't use it. It was mostly used by OEM laptop/tablet installs. What finally drove EFI booting adoption was when NVME drives (either M.2 or PCIe based) came to market. These drives required using EFI to boot, or it just wouldn't work.

At least this was the case for me. This was when I reluctantly moved from the old simple MBR method to EFI booting.

EFI, instead of using those MBR sectors at the front of the drive, writes boot info to a small FAT32 partition on the drive (usually ~512MB in size) that the BIOS knows to access, and thus initiates the boot process.

OS installers make the process of installing EFI or MBR transparent, so that's not a big problem. Where it becomes a problem is if you have an old SATA drive (Hard drive or SATA SSD) with an installed operating system using the old MBR method and want to image that to a new NVMe (m.2, PCIe or U.2) drive, if you just straight duplicate the drive to the new one, it will not boot. The system just won't find a bootable drive.

most ssds has something similar and usually as easy to use...
make sure your firmware is up to date.

its how you move from legacy mode to uefi mode without reinstalling windows and only take a few minutes.

Fixing this can be complicated, but maybe its just because I only do it every couple of years or so, and have to look it up every time. I have yet to find a good automated tool to do it. Sometimes a Windows startup repair launched from a bootable Windows USB media can do it, but sometimes you have to create the partition manually and use powershell to add the EFI entries to that partition. It's a real pain in the ass.

I'm still kind of annoyed at EFI booting. MBR was simple, and jut worked. I still use it on my few remaining SATA based systems, but as more and more of my systems use NVMe drives I'm being forced onto EFI, and every time it makes me grumble.

To me it's just further evidence of the "slide towards stupid" in tech and computers, which seemingly started in 2007 at about the same time as the "great recession" and the launch of the iPhone. Ever since then things just keep getting dumber.

 

[pendragon1]

Fixing this can be complicated, but maybe its just because I only do it every couple of years or so, and have to look it up every time. I have yet to find a good automated tool to do it. Sometimes a Windows startup repair launched from a bootable Windows USB media can do it, but sometimes you have to create the partition manually and use powershell to add the EFI entries to that partition. It's a real pain in the ass.

I'm still kind of annoyed at EFI booting. MBR was simple, and jut worked. I still use it on my few remaining SATA based systems, but as more and more of my systems use NVMe drives I'm being forced onto EFI, and every time it makes me grumble.

To me it's just further evidence of the "slide towards stupid" in tech and computers, which seemingly started in 2007 at about the same time as the "great recession" and the launch of the iPhone. Ever since then things just keep getting dumber.

ive only seen it and done via command line but it was pretty straight forward and simple. i didnt have to create anything, the process did it. i think i followed MS instructions.
i totally agree, legacy mode is simple.
yup...