Precision 5520 hard drive swap

Hello, New here. I just bought a Precision 5520. At the last minute I switched my configuration and went with the touch display. I did all my research on the non-touch and I'm figuring out that the hardware configuration differences have an impact on one of the key post purchase items I planned to upgrade.

I have tried searching this forum and the XPS forum for how to clone the existing drive on to a new larger version without the use of a desktop computer. I haven't found much and what I have found is people having issues just changing manufacturers. If I missed a post, I apologize.

Via work I get great pricing on M2 PCIe hard drives so I thought I would buy small and upgrade on my own. In all my post purchase reading I have found that it may not be as easy as I thought. My initial review I had the smaller 56wh battery and standard display and was just going to install the second drive. With the touch display I have the larger battery and that isn't an option. I have to upgrade the main hard drive. According to what I have read, swapping the battery isn't an option either.

Can I clone onto a usb drive and then restore to the newer drive? I was originally planning to use a usb to M2 adapter (with new larger drive installed), but I have found that one doesn't exist for the M2 Pcie NVMe drive (could be wrong).

I was going to go 512, but it seems I should just go 1TB now that it looks to be such a pain. What drive should I buy to make sure it goes smoothly?

Should I just return and go back to my original configuration. Or return and get the larger hard drive and my current configuration?

It has been a while since I have torn into my computers, but I'm a 5-6 out of 10 in technical capability and can google search the heck out of things...... Apparently just after purchase.

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

I've not tried cloning an NVMe SSD but the route I would try is to same an image on an external drive and then restoring this onto the new SSD. You can first try using Macrium Reflect (which is free) and, if that doesn't work, then try Acronis. If your SSDs are Samsung then there's the Samsung Migration software.

John

 

Thanks. That was going to be my first shot as well. The more I looked into it the cost exploded and it really wasn’t the config I wanted. I returned and ordered a new one with the correct, battery, display, and two hard drives.

Again after further review it looks like I may have botched the dual drive thing up as well. I assumed dell made the M2 drive the boot drive and the Sata drive the spare. It doesn’t sound like that is the case. I will See when it show up. The 2tb drive was an additional $10 so I thought that is much cheaper than I could buy it for so I added it during ordering instead of ordering just the M2 and adding the drive later.

In the end I got what I wanted for the price I wanted so can’t complain.