Upgrade Activity: Harddrive SSD → SSD

5 min readJun 7, 2021

I need to upgrade my hard drive from SSD M.2 500GB to SSD M.2 1TB👌. I will show you my process and problem during the installation. During 24 hours, I had to swap the hard drives at least 10 times to find the problem. I needed to clone drive at least 5 times for the login issue and startup issue. My experience will help you to save some alternative steps and time⏳ for this simple upgrade. No more dump talk. Let’s begin.

— === Menu === —

👓1. Hardware &. Software Requirements
🙋 2. Windows Local Account
👯 3. Clone
☯️ 4. Swap the Hardware
🏌 5. Startup

👓1. Hardware &. Software Requirements …… → Menu

Hardware Shopping List:

#1. 1TB SSD M.2

#2. M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure with Fan

Software: Macrium — https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree#

Put down your email address. Macrium will send you an email. By Clicking the link in the email, your browser will start the download right away.

Follow the instruction to install the software.

Your code is from your registration email.

Installation is done!

🙋 2. Windows Local Account …… → Menu

Before you clone the drive, you need to prepare a local user account in Windows 10. Otherwise, you can not log into the Windows Automatic Repair because it has no network connection.

😱What?! I can’t log into my Windows account.

In that situation, you have to these tasks:

Swap the hard drives
Log into Windows to create a local account
Clone the hard drive
Swap the hard drives
Fix startup in Automatic Repair

🖐🏻Can you count how many steps you will go through?

Setting

Account

Your info

Sign in with a local account instead

Next,

Sign out and finish.

Now, you have a local account ready.

👯 3. Clone …… → Menu

Source

Destination

Use Cloned Partition Properties to expand the 2nd partition before you insert the last partition. Otherwise, you have to cancel it and do it again. You cannot swap the order of the partitions or you will have 0xc000000e error.