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tudorrover

1 Rookie

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8 Posts

101

October 28th, 2024 19:04

Upgrade of my SSD C: drive on my Inspiron 3671

Hello

I have an Inspiron 3671 with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9700 CPU @ 3.00GHz with 16 GB Ram.

I am running Windows 11. Do I have to change from RAID to AHCI?

There are two questions which I need an answer to.

Question 1

I want to upgrade my C: drive which runs on a

Samsung PM991 NVMe 256GB SSD ...   with a

Samsung 980 PRO 1TB M.2 NVMe PCI Express 4.0 SSD

Is that possible?

Question 2

I am running Windows 11. Do I have to change from RAID to AHCI?

Thanks 

RoHe

10 Elder

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45.2K Posts

October 29th, 2024 19:35

To be safe, you could disconnect all SATA drives, leaving only the boot NVME SSD installed before you change BIOS to AHCI.  If PC boots/runs ok after BIOS is changed to AHCI, it should then be safe to reconnect the SATA drives, and the image then new SSD.

Are you talking about an internal PCI-e>M2 NVME adapter or an external USB>M.2 NVME adapter? Inspiron 3671 only has PCI-e x1 and PCI-e x16 slots.  So an internal PCI-e>M2 NVME adapter will have to support PCI-e x1. BIOS might not recognize/use any card other than x16 GPU in the x16 slot. 

The other question is about speed using an internal x1 adapter to image the boot SSD vs using a USB3>M.2 NVME adapter with SSD or directly onto an external USB3 HDD or external (portable) USB3 SSD.

As long as you don't put the old SSD onto the NVME adapter after the cloning and the new SSD is in the motherboard M.2 slot, you should be fine. Windows Boot Manager gets testy when more than one drive that's connected has the OS on it.  You'd have to initialize the old SSD using Windows Disk Management (ALL FILES DELETED!), if you want to use it with an internal PCI-e>M.2 adapter for storage. 

Macrium is really good and it should be easy to expand the C: partition while you're cloning the image onto the new, bigger SSD.  Just make sure you're familiar with the settings to do it....

(edited)

RoHe

10 Elder

 • 

45.2K Posts

October 28th, 2024 22:20

Samsung SSDs don't work well, and their software may not run, if you have SATA Operation set to RAID in BIOS setup.  It's not hard to change, but you have to do it the right way or you'll make PC unbootable:

  1. Open Cmd prompt window,  run as administrator
  2. Copy-paste this command, which will start Windows in Safe Mode the next time you reboot: bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal and press Enter
  3. Restart the computer and tap F2 to open BIOS setup
  4. Change SATA operation mode from RAID to AHCI
  5. Save the change and exit Setup. Windows will automatically boot in Safe Mode
  6. Open Cmd again, as in step #1
  7. Copy-paste this command, which will start Windows in Normal Mode the next time you reboot: bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot and press Enter
  8. Reboot and Windows will automatically start with AHCI drivers enabled
  9. Confirm that everything is working properly

Now you're ready to create an image of the existing SSD and save it on external USB HDD.  Swap in new SSD and copy the image onto this SSD. 

NOTES:

  1. Your imaging software should be able to create the bootable USB stick you'll need to boot PC after you swap in the new (blank) SSD. So be sure to create this USB before doing anything else.
  2. Since new SSD is much larger than old one, you'll want to expand size of the C: partition on new SSD when you move the partitions onto this new drive. So be sure you know how your imaging software does that.  Otherwise all the extra space on new SSD will wasted.
  3. Inspiron 3671 only supports PCI-e 3.0. A PCI-e 4.0 SSD should be backward compatible with PCI-e 3.0, so it will work, but can't run faster than PCI-e 3.0 speed.

(edited)

tudorrover

1 Rookie

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8 Posts

October 29th, 2024 11:17

Thanks, Ron,

I use Macrium Reflect to clone the C: 

Can I clone it with an M.2 adapter and swap the old C: SSD with the cloned one?

tudorrover

1 Rookie

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8 Posts

October 29th, 2024 11:51

Hi Ron,

could it be that I face problems when I change to AHCI? This is a production PC with a lot of data on attached SATA drives.

tudorrover

1 Rookie

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8 Posts

November 17th, 2024 09:57

Hi @RoHe

I have decided to do the change to AHCI. However, I have a small problem !!

If I use the command bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal and restart my Windows 11 Pro (23H2) it does not indicate that it is in SafeBoot mode. Should it not state on both four corners of the screen SAFEBOOT? Everything is as normal. How can I be sure that it is in SAFEBOOT mode?

I am concerned that the PC is not in the mode I set with the command line.

(edited)

tudorrover

1 Rookie

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8 Posts

November 17th, 2024 10:25

Dear RoHe,

I was misled because the command said it executed successfully! So be aware that it should show on both four corners of the screen SAFEBOOT after the reboot. 

I have found the problem. One should run the following command line

bcdedit /set  safeboot minimal

and for coming back to the normal mode

bcdedit /deletevalue safeboot

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