Found a tutorial that seems to address the concerns of cloning a laptop SSD. Should I follow it?

BC795

So I have a Dell Latitude 3310, and while I do know from some time ago that it's possible to upgrade the SSD, I have heard that there's risks of blue screens and whatnot if you clone it, which is my main plan. While I do know that a clean install is usually the safest method, and that Dell has a way to reinstall the drivers that come with it (https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000183911/how-to-download-and-install-dell-drivers), I'm unsure if this has everything else needed for my laptop, though I haven't been able to check due to being out for holiday travel at the time of writing.

At the same time though, I have no critical data on the laptop that can't be backed up to an external, as in most cases I've used my laptop for school with an external HDD attached. So ultimately I can do either, but I'd want to try and safely clone first to reduce any potential hassle from a clean install. Helps that I've cloned a SATA SSD to a higher capacity one on my main PC and had no issues. These being M.2s/NVMEs however, I'd imagine it's not the exact same.

That said, I did find this video of this being done on another Dell laptop using Macrium Reflect, and its directions and use of the rescue media seems to contain a feature that seems to address the possible boot errors from cloning. The video can be found here:

https://youtu.be/CHCENfs87F4?si=v_0j7UIEh5cis5E_

I know it's a few years old but it at least shows it's not impossible. For that matter I'm still on Windows 10 on this laptop.

Any feedback would be appreciated. I'm willing to invest in a USB m.2 enclosure to carry this out. Thanks in advance.

Vaganza

If you geta Samsung SSD the Migration software that comes with it is very good, have had MANY successful transfers that way

BC795

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/comment/53590#Comment_53590

Thanks so much for telling me! I had no idea it was a thing, and my destination drive happens to be a Samsung. After looking at a semi-hidden manual for the SSD, I see the software should activate once I plug it in, even via USB. I'll definitely look into this more and the USB m.2 enclosure. Thanks once again!

PowerSpec_MikeW

@BC795

You can download the Samsung data migration from their site: https://semiconductor.samsung.com/us/consumer-storage/support/tools/

I've never had a problem with it, it makes choosing the Samsung drive a good choice for an easy clone. As far as BSOD's on a clone, switching the drives on the same hardware that isn't too likely. If so, you likely had an issue cloning related to the boot configuration data. I have had to rewrite it to get a clone drive to boot, but it can be done with windows installation media and generally isn't too difficult.