Upgrading to an NVME PCIe SSD and OS installation questions.

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Laurence
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Firstly, my existing set up:
Windows10 Home
Motherboard: Aorus Z370 Ultra Gaming
CPU: i7-8700K
RAM: 16Gb DDR4 PC4-19200C14 2400MHz 2x8Gb Dual Channel Kit
GPU Radeon RX 580. 8Gb.
My existing Samsung SATA SSD 250Gb boot drive and application drive is almost full.

I will be using this PC almost solely for photo and video processing and storage as my 2014 iMac no longer does the job sadly.
I intend moving to PCIe NVME SSD and I have a few questions:
1.Keep existing SATA ssd for clean install of Win10 as boot drive and use NVME drive for applications and storage. The pc is never turned off, only put to sleep.
2. Use new NVME drive for clean Win10 install, applications and storage in one partition.
3. Use new NVME drive and partition it for OS, applications and storage on different partitions.
Thanks for looking.
 
I would use option 2 but you could use an app to back up Win 10 and transfer it to the new drive.
 
I would be inclined to use the NVME for the OS and applications. I would certainly do a clean install of the OS, it takes a bit longer but I always do that and never had any issues.

I would use the SSD for storage of stuff you are working on frequently. Say things like images/videos from 2020/21 and stuff like that.

I would buy an internal 2 Terabyte 3.5" 7200rpm drive for longer term storage.

Also make sure you have an external drive for backup and a cloud based backup too.

I just described my system (minus a few other drives) :giggle:
 
I have something similar.

I would not partition anything (there's no advantage with windows) but would run OS, applications and recent images off the nvme drive. As suggested, I'd use a 2TB+ HDD as storage onboard.

My XPS15 is set up with 1TB mSATA drive for OS, apps and 2 years worth of images, with a 2TB hard drive onboard too. Backup is to external 4TB drives.
 
Yeah Option 2.

Or juts use AOMei to clone your existing setup. If there's nothing wrong with it at the moment then TBH it should be fine.
 
I would not partition anything (there's no advantage with windows)

The big advantage is when it f***s up and you have to reinstall. Personal data has much better / easier survivability in these scenarios.

I would certainly go for a clean install if that is an option.
 
I plan on doing a clean install so I created a bootable USB drive yesterday with a Win10 ISO on it.
Had a look inside the case last night and it looks like it will be pretty easy to install the ssd in the lower slot without removing the graphics card which is water cooled lol:cool:.
 
I plan on doing a clean install so I created a bootable USB drive yesterday with a Win10 ISO on it.
Had a look inside the case last night and it looks like it will be pretty easy to install the ssd in the lower slot without removing the graphics card which is water cooled lol:cool:.

You might want to check your MB specs....mine has 2 slots. The easy to access one runs at half the speed of the one under the GPU.
 
You might want to check your MB specs....mine has 2 slots. The easy to access one runs at half the speed of the one under the GPU.
Yes, that did give me a bit of a headache but it seems that the "upper" slot is primarily for the Type 22110 form factor mvme's while the lower one is for the Type 2280 size which is the one I'm getting. They both appear to be rated as PCIe Gen3 x4 so they both utilise the same number of PCIe lanes. If a SATA card is installed in that 2280 slot then there can be conflicts with other SATA drives.
I'm glad you pointed that out as it made me revisit the motherboard specs.
 
I had to make a change in the BIOS to run the NVME at the optimal setting on my Asus board (an older board). By doing so it meant I lost one Sata port but I had enough free ones for what I need.

Sounds like you have things sorted.
 
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