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April 26th, 2025 15:26
Upgrading my NVMe M.2 512 GB SSD drive (XPS 15 9560)
Hello, I have a doubt about the upgrade path for my NVMe M.2 512 GB SSD drive.
From what I see (photo attached) the original SSD is M-keyed, and has a 2280 footprint, so it must be a PCIe x4/SSD. 
(1) Is that confirmed by the picture I uploaded ? Beyond recognizing that it is a PCIe 3rd generation 4 lane SSD and knowing that its storage space is 512GB, I am not very familiar with the rest of what I see on the label.
(2) Can I proceed with a standard swap of this 512 GB SSD with a 1024 GB one ?
(3) What HW is out there that I can use to transfer the contents of my present 512GB SSD onto the new larger one ? ... preferably something that works over USB-C ?
I am guessing that I will need to do a bit-wise copy of the 512 GB SSD onto the 1014 GB one and then make sure that the UUIDs of each partition on the target 1024 GB SSD are suitably referenced at boot time. Then of course I would need to extend the partitions inside the 1024 GB SSD to make the new addressing space reachable.
(4) Last but not least, I am base Europe based and would definitely prefer to buy a new OEM part not a used 1 TB SSD. So eBay might not be the best place for that. Can anybody confirm that new 1024 GB SSDs with the same footprint are still available for the buying ? If so I will keep looking.
Thank you for any help and advice.
C.
ejn63
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April 26th, 2025 15:38
Any standard 1T NVMe M.2 2280 NVMe drive will work.
You'll either need an external USB NVMe enclosure to hold one drive will you image it to the other, or you'll need an external hard drive with enough space to hold a complete system image. There are plenty of tools you can use to make the image - Macrium Reflect, Acronis, and others. Some drive manufacturers supply imaging software you can use as well.
Cbhihe
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April 26th, 2025 17:07
> Any standard 1T NVMe M.2 2280 NVMe drive will work.
Thank you, ejn63.
> You'll either need an external USB NVMe enclosure ...
Exactly what I will be looking for.
> There are plenty of tools you can use to make the image - Macrium Reflect, Acronis, and others.
The 'dd' utility is the simpler and more reliable alternative for Linux.
Again thank you.
HedgeFundManager
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April 27th, 2025 02:14
I suggest a fresh install of Windows so that the SSD is provisioned efficiently
I have the XPS 15 9570 which is one year newer with a 4K LCD on it. I installed a 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD even though the machine is PCIe 3.0 has the WD SN580 as it can saturate the slot at max performance.
(edited)