Samsung 990 M.2 NVMe SSD Install and Data Clone on a Gaming Desktop

Today I helped a client install a Samsung 990 M.2 NVMe SSD into their gaming desktop computer. The motherboard was an ASUS Wi-Fi board, and the existing desktop had a hard drive installed. The customer wanted the data moved from the existing hard drive to the new SSD.

First I downloaded Samsung Magician, then shut down the PC, opened it up, and installed the new SSD into the M.2 slot. I then rebooted into Windows, opened up Samsung Magician, and began the cloning process.

The cloning process took about half an hour because the original hard drive only had 280 GB of data that needed to be cloned.

Once that was completed, it was time to restart the computer. Before Windows loaded after the restart, I went into the BIOS and changed the boot drive so that the new SSD was set as boot drive number one.

After that, I successfully booted back into Windows. Windows detected the new drive and triggered some updates. Overall a pretty straightforward process and the customer was happy.

We timed the boot from power-on until the OS appeared and it came in at 35 seconds.