I chose to clone (rather than back up) my 1TB SSD onto my 2TB SSD so that I could ultimately boot from the 2TB SSD and make it my new C drive.
I appreciate that the version I installed is free for commercial use, as many pieces of software ask you to pay extra for a commercial license.
I then used Macrium Reflect Free to clone my original 1TB SSD onto the new SSD.
I didn’t do this step at first, and as a result I needed to redo the following steps.Ĥ. Because my old SSD was encrypted, I needed to unencrypt it first, which took a little while. I used this guide to initialize it, which went fine.ģ.
The new drive didn’t appear in Windows Explorer, but it turned out this was because it was not yet initialized. If needed, I probably could have re-designated this SSD as the boot drive within BIOS.Ģ. Windows (or perhaps the BIOS) correctly recognized my old SSD as the C: drive, even though I had physically relocated it. Thus, Slot 1 has two thermal pads compared to Slot 2-perhaps another reason to prioritize Slot 1 for your main SSD.ġ. In doing so, I noticed that this cover had another thermal pad attached to it that appeared to sit over Slot 1. I placed the bottom part of the laptop case back into place and screwed it back in. Here’s what the laptop looked like after I moved my original SSD to Slot 2 (on the bottom left of the image) and installed the new one into Slot 1 (on the center right).ĥ. I imagine this extra thermal pad plays a crucial role in preventing overheating. I then stuck the extra SSD thermal pad that came with the laptop onto my new 2TB SSD inserted the SSD into Slot 1 and screwed the SSD into place. Only one screw needed to be removed and replaced per slot.*Ĥ. I moved it because only Slot 1 is a Gen4 slot, and I would rather have my 2TB drive in that slot than just a 1TB drive. Next, I moved the SSD already present in the laptop (in a slot I’ll call Slot 1) to the other SSD slot (which I’ll call Slot 2). Once all the screws were removed, I pried open the case, which was quite easy to do by putting my finger under one of the display hinges and pulling down.ģ. Hopefully doing so didn’t violate my warranty in the process. Thankfully, these were just regular screws underneath the coating, but I wonder whether the coating was present to detect whether someone had opened up the laptop. What’s interesting, though, is that two of the screws on the case were covered with some kind of metallic coating. I used a cheap screwdriver that came with a number of star-shaped bits the T6-sized bit worked great. This cover is held into place on the Aorus 15P YD by a number of star-style screws, so a regular screwdriver wouldn’t work. I removed the bottom part of the laptop’s case. That way, if anything went horribly wrong with the later steps, I would still be able to boot into Windows.Ģ. As recommended by others, I used Windows’s “Create a Recovery Drive” tool to install a recovery partition onto a USB drive. This seemed to fix most of the the problems I was having, and I didn’t need to reinstall my program files or settings during or after the reinstall.ġ.
heldchen’s answer to this question helped me restore access to some programs, but ultimately I ended up downloading and reinstalling Windows 10 via the Media Creation Tool program. ( Note: I am sorting these steps by my recommended order, rather than my actual order-since I would have done things differently the second time around.)Īnother note: somewhere along the process, I lost access to my Photos app, Windows store, and at least one other application. It should be useful not only for people with Aorus 15P YD laptops, but also for others with Windows laptops that have 2 internal SSD slots. This article discusses the steps I took, along with mistakes I made along the way. This drive, like the one that comes with the laptop, has an M2 form factor, so it’s amazingly small compared to the SATA SSDs I have been used to. Therefore, I decided to buy a second (2TB) Gen4 SSD, the Seatagate FireCuda 520. However, after installing a number of programs on it, I had only about 34% of the 1TB SSD free to use. So far, I’ve been quite happy with my Gigabyte Aorus 15P YD.