So I’m finally getting around to upgrading my WD_Black 500GB NVMe drive to a larger 2TB size, and I want to avoid problems. I can’t actually even remember what software I used last time to clone a drive. I do seem to remember though that I encountered some sort of quirk in the process.
Soooo throw your best advice at me for cloning my drive? The new drive will be my only drive, so it needs to be bootable. 
What software have you specifically used and recommend?
Also, here’s a question, would it be best to put the new drive in my main (fastest) m.2 board slot FIRST, before cloning it, and put my put current drive into one of the other slots and then do the clone? I’m thinking that may probably be the best way to do it, but if I’m wrong let me know.
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It has been a minute since I’ve cloned a drive, with both software and a hardware cloner, and I had my fair share of headaches. Cloning an entire disk is a straightforward process, as it clones everything, including the boot config, but there’s something I’ll point out when going to a larger drive.
My system mostly has Samsung SSDs, so I use Samsung Data Migration for ease and simplicity.
I usually turn to Clonezilla for all other brands but the UI may not be favorable to some people unless you’re familiar with working under a Linux environment.
Other free ones I would suggest are EaseUS Partition Master, AOMEI Partition Assistant, and MiniTool Partition Wizard Free. I would have recommended Macrium Reflect at one point but they no longer offer their app for free. I would recommend that one if you are willing to pay.
Since you said your new drive will be the only drive in the system, your headaches should be minimal. You can do it the way you mentioned: sticking your new drive in the primary M.2 slot, your old drive in the secondary slot (the BIOS should be able to find your drive and boot from it), clone it following any of the apps’ cloning wizard, and pull your old drive back out before you boot your system again with the new drive.
My headaches came from having multiple drives in a system, like:
- Still booting from the old drive (it’s why it’s recommended that you pull out your old drive before booting your system with the new drive. Just changing the boot order in the BIOS settings doesn’t always work. You can put it back in after that point and wipe it for extra storage.)
- Missing/corrupted boot partition or cannot locate Windows installation (I would then have to go through a tedious process of going into Windows repair and recreate/repair the boot partition and point it to where the Windows install is located.)
Now, when going to a larger drive, some of those apps’ cloning wizard will give you the option to proportionally increase all partition sizes to fill up the space of the new drive. There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing it this way, other than losing some space to the partitions you’ll have no interaction with - the “boot” partition and the “system reserved”, sitting there being wasted. Now, I cannot remember if there was an option to independently choose what partitions you could resize with the cloning wizard, or if you had to pay for premium to do so. I remember always having to end up keeping the original size and manually extending my “main” partition with Windows Disk Management. I had to do this even with a hardware cloner.
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WD comes with Acronis True Image OEM. They’ll get the job done. Acronis OEM will transfer to the SSD “brand” with license.
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I recommend nothing, and instead going for a fresh start. You have to trust the cloning software to align partitions, and even handle 512, 512e, and 4K sector sizes. And then trust that all of that is optimal for the OS. Yeah some cloning software may claim to handle that, but can you really trust it’s the best-standard for the modern OS? Cloning software is primarily for older, long-standing systems in businesses where reliability is key; not performance or modernity. Compatibility is prioritized over performance, and if you’re going to a fresh speedy NVMe, you likely want the best performance right?
You can clean-install an OS, have no concern about any of that, and have the chance to figure out what software you really want and need, clean up any old cruft, and clean-up any potential security concerns or low-key malware.
I use fox clone with ventoy. I had an old 120 gb drive laying around & got tired of the slow performance of USB keys so I just ended up using it like a USB key that stays in my computer all the time
Ventoy give you the ability to boot off of isos - its linux based and just lets you boot to it, then direct it to the iso you want to boot to. I keep several OSs on that partition ready for updates or just playing around
If you boot ventoy to Fox Clone, you can clone drives or do full backups. I have n old 1 TB drive I just use for backups so I do a setup I like, on my nvme, install all games update them and the os, then back it up to the 1 tb spinning drive. If I ever have an issue, its a quick reboot to the 120 gb drive, restore from foxclone and I now have a new fresh ready to go install with maybe only a few updates needed
Yeah its can be seen as complex, but its what I find fun