Replacing M.2 drive - couple of questions

[877cms]

Hi all,

My mobo is a Maximus X Formula.

I will soon be replacing my M.2 drive (the one onboard with the heatshield cover and thermal pad).

My questions are:

1) Am I ok to re-use the thermal pad? The old M.2 is a 960 EVO 250GB, the new will be 960 PRO 512BG.
I ask because the chips will have surely left dents in the thermal pad, so it won't contact as well?

2) Best software to clone the old drive to the new one? (I can't be bothered to re-install Windows etc.. tbh)

Thanks

[xeromist]

Thermal pads are pretty resilient. I've reused old pads many times with no ill effect. As long as you keep them clean and aren't stretching them way out they should be fine.

I use Macrium Reflect. The free version works fine for migration. You have to pre-shrink partitions when moving to a smaller drive but since you are moving to a larger one it should be super easy. Just make sure one of your partitions is expanded to use the extra free space on the destination drive.

[davemon50]

xeromist has a good answer, but Just to offer you another option, I replaced mine and used new pads. THESE PADS are inexpensive and good quality pads and packaging. And you have two Samsung drives, so if you are replacing with a new Samsung drive you could choose the Samsung Data Migration software. I've used it twice very successfully.

[877cms]

Thank you both, I will have a look at those replacement thermal pads.

Since posting I did see the Samsung tool, it would seem the logical choice.

However, I need to clone my 😧 drive (non bootable, just storage) and the software needs to run from Windows it seems.

So I don't have enough M.2 slots for the total three drives.

I guess I could buy a PCIe M.2 adapter but would prefer to avoid the cost, there must be a USB bootable tool.

I'll have a look at Macrium Reflect, in the past I have used Acronis too..

[xeromist]

In the past I've used Clonezilla, which is bootable. I've had issues trying to get it to clone a boot drive but since this is a data drive you should be fine.