How to clone Nvme ssd to Standard Sata SSD

Theo, welcome to these public User Forums.

What type of computer is involved here?  Is this a desktop / tower PC or a laptop / notebook?

Are both drives installed internally in the computer?

Please make a full Disk backup of the working NVMe drive before starting any other operations - this is your safety net in case any issues arise.

The NVMe drivers shouldn't be an issue when cloning to a SATA SSD but you will probably need to make changes in the BIOS to select the correct boot device.
If your NVMe SSD is booting using UEFI / GPT, then the boot device will be "Windows Boot Manager" and the cloned SATA SSD will need to use the same mode but with the Windows Boot Manager selected from that drive, not the NVMe drive.

It would probably be best to temporarily remove the NVMe SSD when first booting from the SATA SSD after the clone.

Please see KB 56634: Acronis True Image: how to clone a disk - and review the step by step guide given there.

Note: the first section of the above KB document directs laptop users to KB 2931: How to clone a laptop hard drive - and has the following paragraph:

It is recommended to put the new drive in the laptop first, and connect the old drive via USB. Otherwise you will may not be able to boot from the new cloned drive, as Acronis True Image will apply a bootability fix to the new disk and adjust the boot settings of the target drive to boot from USB. If the new disk is inside the laptop, the boot settings will be automatically adjusted to boot from internal disk. As such, hard disk bays cannot be used for target disks. For example, if you have a target hard disk (i.e. the new disk to which you clone, and from which you intend to boot the machine) in a bay, and not physically inside the laptop, the target hard disk will be unbootable after the cloning.

Thank you or reply.

It is a tower PC and both disk are installed internally in the computer.

The reason is that I have 6 HDD + 1 Nvme installed (this one taking 2 sata port lines).

I want to replace this Nvme with 1 x SATA  SSD + 1 x HDD

So then the total will be : 7xHDD + 1xSSD SATA

I will try to clone as you say. But I have another question, the Nvme disk is bigger than the Sata SSD but I have reduced the partition of the Nvme (as you can the on my first post attachment).

It will work ? Because I remember we cant clone a bigger disk to a smaller

Another question from the "56634: Acronis True Image: how to clone a disk"

If you clone a disk with Windows to an external USB hard drive, you might not be able to boot from it. We recommend cloning to an internal SSD or HDD instead.

That mean we cant clone internal disk1 to external disk2, then place disk2 internally ? It will not boot ?

Theo, thanks for the further information.

Given that you have 6 HDD plus the NVMe SSD in your tower, then I would suggest taking some extra steps to protect against any mistakes.

Label the cables to the 6 HDD drives and the drives, then disconnect those drives before attempting any clone of the NVMe SSD.

Connect the new SATA SSD internally and try to use the first SATA controller / port 0 which would be the default for booting Windows from.  You want the SSD to show in Windows Disk Management as drive 0 when all is done.

Boot from the Acronis rescue media in UEFI mode and clone your NVMe SSD to the SATA SSD and check the Log for the operation while still in the rescue environment / save the log.

If all is good / successful, then shutdown, remove the NVMe SSD and attempt to boot from the SATA SSD (after checking that it is shown correctly in the BIOS boot area as "Windows Boot Manager" from that drive.

If you are able to boot into Windows without any issues, then shutdown again, reconnect the other HDD drives to confirm that all remains OK before connecting any further new drives.

Check that all your drives have retained their correct drive letters, and if any have changed, reset them back to how they need to be named using Windows Disk Management.

May I suggest you double check the documentation for you motherboard; while I understand that some chipset implementations disable SATA ports when an NVMe M.2 drive is attached, others (including all the ones I have) on result in disabling of SATA ports if a SATA M.2 drive is being used.

An alternative strategy would be to acquire a PCIe SATA controller card; I have used 4 port ones with Marvel 91xx and 92xx chipsets (the latter supports RAID) without issues.

Ian

Thank you guys.

I will not change my nvme ssd after reflexion, I bought this product : https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B00AZ9T3OU to add more sata disk.

This is a good idea, thank you.

Glad the alternative approach seems to meet your needs.

Ian

My question is similar to the OP's.  I've got an ASUS ROG Strix Z-490e MB and have Sata SSD's.  I've been cloning with Acronis for 15+ years and still prefer the old method of shutdown after cloning to the new 'live cloning' or whatever it's called....and most of my cloning is for making backup drives 'just in case' somethings happens...I can simply switch out to the back up.  OK, I would like to clone my Sata SSD to a PCIe NVME external drive (Samsung 970 EVO Plus (enclosure with USB-C==USB-C and USB-C==USB3.1 cables) and I want the external drive to be bootable.  But every time i've cloned, I get the BSOD inaccessible drive.  Yea, the Sata SSD is UEFI and the BIOS settings are all strictly UEFI (no Legacy). I can see the NVME/enclosure on Disk Management and in Acronis cloning screen where you can select the disks....but it is not bootable.  I'm wondering if it's because there's no opportunity to introduce NVME drivers?  When I try to load the drivers on the Sata SSD, it the driver install says 'no NVME drive detected', even when it's connected by the external enclosure cables and seen on Disk management. But once I clone the Sata SSD to the NVME, it will wipe anything on the NVME anyway.  Any suggestions?

I suspect you are running up against a restriction imposed by Microsoft - unless you have an Enterprise version of Windows you cannot create a bootable USB drive (does not depend on the type of drive, includes USB sticks, SATA NVMe M.2 and SATA M.2 drives in USB enclosures).

To do what you want you would need to create the clone using the rescue media. (Not sure if the Windows RE and Windows PE based media have the same restrictions - I have only cloned to internal dive.) 

Ian

Question spin off from the OP's original question (How to clone NVME SSD to SATA SSD).

I have in the past used cloned SSD copies of main SATA SSD drive (C:) and a SATA SSD data drive (partitioned into D:, E:, F:). So, 2 SATA SSD drives in the computer and 2 identical SATA SSD clone/backups, just in case.  I would use Apricon SATA-USB3 connector to attach to USB3 port and clone via Acronis.

OK, now I have a system with an M.2 NVME drive where I cloned the SATA SSD (C:) to the empty M.2 NVME (had to initilize it and install NVME drivers)....so after the SATA to NVME clone, the system was shut down, the SATA SSD removed, and upon restart, went to BIOS to switch to NVME.  Everything has been working great.

Now I'm interested in backing up the NVME drive and I'm curious if I could again, clone the NVME to a SATA SSD and keep the cloned SATA SSD as the backup ('just in case' something would happen to the NVME, could I simply put a new one in and clone back from the (NVME-)cloned-SATA SSD to the new NVME drive? I could readily try that with an extra SSD and NVME, but it's a hassle to take the NVME drive out because my ASUS MB has these plastic/aluminum plates over the M.2 slot and have to take the GPU out as well.  My only experience has been 1-way cloning from SATA-to-NVME, I've never tried back-and-forth to see if that works.

PMM, you could put a new SATA SSD in your PC with the drive being initialised as GPT with the drive space left as unallocated then clone from the NVMe SSD to the SATA SSD but Acronis would then modify the boot settings to set the SATA SSD as the main boot drive and expect the NVMe SSD to be removed.

You could also connect the SATA SSD externally to do the clone, then leave it disconnected after the clone is finished if the intent is just to keep it 'just in case'!

Personally, I prefer to just use Backup images as I can store multiple backups on an external drive and run these by schedule so that the backup is kept updated as changes occur.

I have used Backup & Recovery when upgrading my own boot NVMe M.2 SSD in my laptop and this has worked every time, especially as I haven't tried to find a matching NVMe adapter to use if wanting to clone.

Steve Smith wrote:

Personally, I prefer to just use Backup images as I can store multiple backups on an external drive and run these by schedule so that the backup is kept updated as changes occur.

I have used Backup & Recovery when upgrading my own boot NVMe M.2 SSD in my laptop and this has worked every time, especially as I haven't tried to find a matching NVMe adapter to use if wanting to clone.

+1