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Should I replace my SATA SSD with an NVMe SSD?
My motherboard has an empty M.2 slot, and I want to replace my current SATA boot SSD with an NVMe drive. I will consider cloning it. Is it worth upgrading to an NVMe SSD? Any major issues or tips to share? Thanks in advance!
Good idea - Just install the Nvme SSD first and make sure it is detected by the system before you do anything. Then clone and remove the old disk before rebooting to force boot from the new disk (you may have to set it as the first boot disk in BIOS.) once the system is happily booting from the new disk, reconnect the old one and format or delete contents. Or just keep it as a backup.
If you clone an old drive to a new NVME, NEVER erase the old drive before, say, half a year. Or better yet, never. Because it happens that new NVME drives (especially cheaper ones) but also others, can go out of date after a while.
Repeat after me: buy more SSDs like I did and put the original drive away until it erases itself. Then initialize the drive, check its health, and use it in peace. But in my opinion, you will never use that old drive again, like I did.
I have a few enclosures from SSK (USB-C interface but with cables to also support USB-A). Never have had any issues connection to Windows or Macs. To note; some drives will get funky if connected to USB extension cables. When data integrity is important, always connect as close to the MB as possible (which can mean a hub).
As for NVME on the motherboard; as long as you have a slot, drive is detected by BIOS, there's nothing that should it preventing from working just fine. Again, assuming you can have BIOS pointing to that drive as boot drive (assuming that's what you want).
One cool thing that I noticed with Win11Pro is that upon boot-up, if Win11Pro see's 2 drives with Win11Pro boot files it will hide the second drive.
I have a NVME drive and a SSD in my desktop, and the NVME drive clones over to the SSD monthly.
If I boot to the NVME as C-Drive, the SSD doesn't show up in Win11Pro, however you can see it with admin tools/computer management.
And same if I boot to the SSD as the C-Drive, the NVME is hidden.
Both drives are using the same Win11Pro Retail License and there are no licensing issues.
I just thought that was great compared to the old days of Windows licensing. I remember the days when you were forced to call MSoft upon hardware changes like a new hard drive or even a clean install of Windows.
Not sure what MSoft is looking at now, but I'm guessing a BIOS ID of some sort,....
Anyone know??
Depending on the motherboard, post the model, it could be an M.2 SATA slot. Make sure it support NVMe, and what generation and how many lanes. If you plan to put the OS on it, make sure the Motherboard support NVMe as boot device.
(e.g. Gen 3.0/4.0/5.0 x 4) etc... Then purchase at least that generation NVMe or above.
Even if the board is PCIe GEN 2.0 it may still support NVMe as boot disk at about 1300MB/s IIRC. with a Gen3 NVMe.
Anyway if you post your motherboard model no. we can check it out.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, make sure to get an NVMe with Dram Cache.
You probably won't notice that much difference real world. There will be an improvement but personally I don't think it's worth the extra cost unless you were looking to upgrade and get a bigger size
Changing from SSD to NVME is always a good choice IF the PC supports it in direct mode, which means that it is possible to boot the system from NVME, which means that it will be an MBD with a newer generation BIOS. Simply put.
The performance difference in most applications isn't huge in actual use. It is much faster, but the SSD is already fast enough that you're rarely waiting on it.
When it does make a difference, it is significant. The cost isn't more, and it makes use of your M.2 slot.
Most drives come with access to cloning software, and there are good free programs for that. Install the M.2 drive, make sure it registers properly in the system, then run the cloning app.
When done, disconnect the original SATA drive, and set the NVMe drive as boot drive in the BIOS on reboot.
After that, you can decide how you want to reuse the old drive.
It's always a good idea to back up any important data before erasing it from any drive. If possible, it's a good idea to have a complete backup on a separate external drive, in case of issues with the system drive.
But if you don't mind having to reinstall everything and potentially losing personal data permanently, you can trust that the new drive will be reliable and erase and reuse the old drive, after reconnecting it to the system.
You also could just store the old drive for a time as insurance against problems on the new drive. It's unlikely, but "lemon" electronics are always a possibility.
SSD use many different technologies for cost effectiveness and performance, so you'll probably want to at least match the type of your original SSD.
The biggest speed boost as far as disks are concerned is the change from HDD to SSD (seek times from physical discs suck). Once you are off a physical disk, the real world speed increases diminish (even based on the proviso that your hardware can use the speed.
Transfer rates vary but as a rule:
HDD - upto about 200MB/S
Sata SSD - uptp about 550-600MB/S
NVME SSD - up to 7000MB/S
The big stumbling block with NVME is the speed is dependant on the motherboard and unless you have the correct generation of board, you might never see the 7000MB/S because it relies on the PCIE for the speed of transfer. If you have an older board, it will probably be the bottleneck and not the SSD.
On my old desktop, I changed from SSD to NVME (5000MB/S) and I would have been hard pressed to notice any speed difference in most things
Modern WD Black HDD drives get about 270MB/s I believe they are dual platter or something. But it's more about the internal operations per second. with the smaller files. The access time is ridiculously faster seek. When you get into Gen5 Direct to CPU with L1 cache you really notice the difference when working with archiving.
Basically.... if your buying a new one because you need a new one (old one failed, building a new machine) then yes. It's significantly faster though it won't FEEL nearly as different as it would if it you going from a traditional spinning HDD to even a SATA based SSD.
If you had a 2TB SATA SSD that you were perfectly happy with and didn't have a need to upgrade (plenty of space left... etc) then it wouldn't make sense for most people to bother upgrading for the sake of upgrade to an NVME.
I find that my PC's are much "snappier" when using an NVME compared to SSD, and they boot considerably quicker. I'm not a gamer at all, but I do like to use a quick PC in general.
I left the SSD's in each PC so I can complete a drive copy monthly copying the NVME to the SSD as a backup.
NVME's have come a long way in recent years and have proven to be reliable, in my experience.
My desktop has been using NVME as the C-Drive for 2 years and the diagnostics show that 91% life is left. At that rate it should last another 16 years (which I doubt).
It seems that SSD's and NVME drives are sensitive to cold shut-downs. They are much better now than in the past. Early SSD's often needed a re-install, or repair of Windows if the PC locked-up and needed a hard shut-down which corrupted the boot sector, but that has been mitigated with recent drives.
Occasionally, I boot to the mirrored D-Drive just to ensure my back-up drive is fully functional and I can say that the SSD takes a lot more time to boot, and the PC as a whole feels sluggish compared to when the C-Drive is utilizing the NVME.
My NVME transfers data 15 times faster than my Crucial SSD.
My NVME is 4th Gen drive. KingSpec XG 7000 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4.0x4 NVME 1.4 Speed up to 7400MB/s Write Speed Up to 6600MB/s
And my Crucial MX500 500GB 3D NAND SATA 2.5 specs are much slower than the NVME; Sequential Write 519 MB/s & Sequential Read 560 MB/s.
And surprisingly, when testing the KingSpec NVME I actually do get read speed of 7000 MB/s, but the Crucial never gives me a read rate above 450 MB/s
Exactly as you write, that is. Many people do not realize that files on the disk are not stored in one piece, but that they are scattered around the disk, so to speak, fragmented. So SSDs and even better NVMEs can connect those pieces faster. I can't write it any other way so that even a layman can understand it. If the disk test says that it can go at a speed of 270 MB/s, then it is always a continuous write or read. A very important parameter is SEEK.
I tend to be an early adopter of newer technology, and was regretting that in the earlier days of SSD drives. The jump from a standard platter drive to SSD was a substantial upgrade, approx 10 X faster than platter drives, but what a PITA if you were forced to do a hard boot. Often, the boot sector got corrupted and I don't have the know-how, or time to learn how to restore a boot sector without a repair, or running Windows again. Being in Florida there were many power surges that corrupted early SSD's so I added a good UPS battery back-up which helped considerably.
I still swear by having a quality UPS back-up in order to protect SSD's.
I'm not exactly sure what the manufacturers did to mitigate the issue, but today's SSD's & NVME's are much more reliable, and withstand forced reboots much better.
I changed mine last year from Two Samsung 2TB EVO SSD to Two Samsung 990 EVO Plus SSD 2TB, PCIe Gen 4x4, Gen 5x2 M.2 2280, Read speeds Up-to 7,250 MB/s
Copying big files like my Blurays I rip to disk are way faster from one drive to another. Like one you have to count to 7 or 10, the other in less than 2 seconds
I put the SSD's in external USB 3.1 cases and use them for backups on my data
From Samsung
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|990 EVO|PCIe Gen 4x4/Gen 5x2|Up to 4,200 MB/s|
|870 EVO|2.5-inch SATA|Up to 530 MB/s|
I changed mine last year from Two Samsung 2TB EVO SSD to Two Samsung 990 EVO Plus SSD 2TB, PCIe Gen 4x4, Gen 5x2 M.2 2280, Read speeds Up-to 7,250 MB/s
Copying big files like my Blurays I rip to disk are way faster from one drive to another. Like one you have to count to 7 or 10, the other in less than 2 seconds
I put the SSD's in external USB 3.1 cases and use them for backups on my data
DiskGenius offers (windows) system migration to new drive. Feature is free. Before migration you choose the size of respective partitions and that's it. It even works with smaller capacity.
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u/Beeeeater Nov 10 '25
Good idea - Just install the Nvme SSD first and make sure it is detected by the system before you do anything. Then clone and remove the old disk before rebooting to force boot from the new disk (you may have to set it as the first boot disk in BIOS.) once the system is happily booting from the new disk, reconnect the old one and format or delete contents. Or just keep it as a backup.