Upgrading from m.2 SATA to Crucial NVMe drive on Latitude 7490

Scenario:

Dell Latitude 7490 with existing SATA m.2 SSD. We want to upgrade to larger NVMe drive (Crucial 1Tb).

First tried new drive in Startech NVMe USB enclosure (M2E1BMU31C). Downloaded Crucial cloning software (locked version of Acronis). Problem – not recognised as Crucial drive so Acronis won’t run.

Posts suggest that the new drive should be installed in the laptop first and the system booted via USB. So take current drive out and put it in a SATA USB m.2 enclosure. Attach this to USB-C port and reboot.

This doesn’t work. What does work is attaching it to a USB-A port instead. Then it boots with no intervention.

After that the disk was clones (with no reboot necessary!), the old dive disconnected and the system booted happily from the new drive.

Published by

Jamie Scott

IT Administrator at the Institute for Gravitational Research, University of Glasgow