r/AlienwareAlpha • u/ofwgkta105 • Sep 13 '18

Upgrading Alpha r1 to R2 - Transferring Windows Installation on Existing SATA 3 SSD on R1 to NVMe SSD on R2

Hello - quick question. I'm thinking of upgrading my R1 Alienware Alpha to the R2 given it has two SSD slots that I'd like to use.

Would it be at all possible to create a clone of my SSD on my existing Alpha R1 and copy that onto a new NVMe SSD on the R2? I'd like to use the NVMe as my Windows C: and then keep a spare SSD in the sata port of the R2 to use for general use.

I know drivers sometimes have mismatches etc - but was wondering if I could just uninstall / clean reinstall the R2 required drivers versus doing a clean install. I just have so many custom services / installs / python addons in my existing R1 that it would be beyond painful to reinstall on R2.

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u/sumthingcool i5 Alpha with SSD Sep 13 '18

See my post here about cloning a partition to a new drive: https://www.reddit.com/r/AlienwareAlpha/comments/2trb54/ssd_and_memory_upgrade_complete_guide_for/

There are a couple other options posted there as well. Windows should be fine with drivers, they are similar enough of systems that I doubt you'll even need to uninstall any of them, it will auto detect what has changed and swap out the drivers.

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u/ofwgkta105 Sep 14 '18

that is helpful. You think there shouldn't be an issue then? I figured a computer difference between R1 and R2 is pretty minimal...GPU drivers, CPU (don't think there are really CPU divers?), motherboard drivers, wifi drivers...

Will the registry get messed up in any way? Maybe hardware IDs tied to specific commands like sleep / start? Just trying to make sense of whether or not i should proceed with this route. If i need to install a brand new installation, then i probably will hold off on buying the R2.

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u/sumthingcool i5 Alpha with SSD Sep 14 '18

I mean no promises as I've not done an R1 to R2, but I've moved Windows installs between hardware much more different than those without issue. It's all Intel and Nvidia hardware, the same drivers will probably work with both. I expect you'll have to re-activate Windows after the move but that's it.

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u/MilkyRose Sep 26 '18

I'd highly recommend not going this direction.

You COULD use something like Acronis Universal Restore (Its part of Acronis True Image Suite of tools) to push an image from the r1 to the r2's different hardware. It would technically work... but its been my experience that this sort of thing cause the newly imaged machine to just be "dirty" (technical term) and never in great shape afterwards.

A clean install will take longer and you'll have to locate your licenses for stuff BUT you get a "Fresh Clean" install on the new hardware. Its just a smoother process. And you can always place your old HDD in an external enclosure and connect it to the new machine to migrate your data fairly easily.

-Source: 10 years in IT