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It has to be connected directly to the motherboard. I was able to complete the transfer using the external hard drive as the middle man but I had some complications that I felt I should describe how I solved and some suggestions to anyone trying to attempt cloning their current hard drive.ġ: It is true that you cannot boot up windows off a USB connection.
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And is it even possible to use the Samsung software for transferring from external to internal because I've only found instances of it being used the other way around. I was wondering if there was any benefit to using the Samsung software for the second file transfer instead of the cloning software I choose for the first one. Both the current HDD and the new SSD have 1TB storage, the Toshiba has 2TB storage.Īlso, I know that Samsung has some Data Migration software I could use for the transfer between my HDD and my Samsung SSD, but I'm not sure this will work for the initial transfer between the two HDDs even though the current HDD is an old Samsung drive. The Toshiba HDD currently has some files on it but I can empty it for any file transfer. I should mention that the operating system is Windows 10. This uses a non-SATA cable to do the file transfer, so I cannot use that cable on my SSD.Ĭould I clone my current HDD to my old Toshiba HDD, swap out the current HDD to the new SSD, and then boot into my laptop with the external HDD and clone it onto my now internally installed SSD? I feel like I can accomplish this with any cloning software (I was thinking Macrium Reflect) but is there anything else I need to be aware of? The old external hard drive is a Toshiba HDTB120XK3CA that I can already connect to my laptop via USB.
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However, in the interest of saving a few dollars for buying this SATA cable, I was wondering if I could instead use my old external hard drive that already has a USB connector to act as a middle man for this file transfer. To clone the drive inside my laptop to the SSD, I found that I can purchase a SATA to USB cable to facilitate the file transfer and then replace the HDD with my SSD. I've recently purchased a Samsung 870 EVO SSD to replace the HDD inside my laptop.
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