Success cloning SATA to NVME

[Brad Johnson]

Just dawned on me... With SWBMO retiring effective May 31, she will lose access to Microsoft Office come Saturday. I get access to the full Office suite under my campus identity but I'd much rather we have a personally-owned standalone version. Campus has gone strictly M365 with a ton of very intrusive oversight which I'd rather sidestep. I really, really, really don't want to go O365 on a personal subscription, mostly for the perpetual cost. I'd rather stay away from Open Office for now, mostly because I do a not-insignificant amount of work from home and need the certainty of single-platform apps, performance, and compatibility. Home & Student is out because it only allows for a single install/user and doesn't include Outlook or Publisher. So, looks like Pro it is.

Does anyone specialize in unopened NOS Office Pro versions, presumably for significantly less than a new retail package? 2021 would be nice, but going back a version or two is no biggie if it saves a chunk of coin.

Brad

[Brad Johnson]

And another question...

If I decide to go M.2 and start from scratch, will Windows automatically configure the M.2 drive as bootable given a fresh install? In other words, is it as simple as powering down, pulling all the old drives, installing the M.2, and booting from install media?

I presume MS picks up the OS licensing automatically the first time you go online, but I'm a W10/11 reinstall virgin. Everything I've done in that respect has been incremental upgrades.

Brad

[lee n. field]

And another question...

If I decide to go M.2 and start from scratch, will Windows automatically configure the M.2 drive as bootable given a fresh install? In other words, is it as simple as powering down, pulling all the old drives, installing the M.2, and booting from install media?

It should.  Boot should be set to UEFI, and bios needs to see the m.2.  Anything reasonably current should be fine.

I presume MS picks up the OS licensing automatically the first time you go online, but I'm a W10/11 reinstall virgin. Everything I've done in that respect has been incremental upgrades.

Brad

Again, it should.

[Hawkmoon]

Does anyone specialize in unopened NOS Office Pro versions, presumably for significantly less than a new retail package? 2021 would be nice, but going back a version or two is no biggie if it saves a chunk of coin.

Brad

Here: https://softkeyworld.com/product/microsoft-office-2021-professional-plus/

Seems to be at least quasi-legit. I bought Office Pro 2021 from them recently and it installed and activated with no hiccups.

When you go to the site, there should be a pop-up for a 20% discount.

[WLJ]

And another question...

If I decide to go M.2 and start from scratch, will Windows automatically configure the M.2 drive as bootable given a fresh install? In other words, is it as simple as powering down, pulling all the old drives, installing the M.2, and booting from install media?

Yes
Although one oddity you may notice is it may  show as drive/disk 1 in both in the BIOS and windows instead of drive/disk 0 depending on your drive setup. This is due to the way M.2 drives are addressed by most motherboards. A second drive on a SATA cable may then show as drive 0. Something to be aware of during OS installs and while managing drives in the OS as the M.2 may show as the 2nd drive in the system and this may throw some people off at first*. Doesn't effect booting as long as the BIOS knows drive 1 is the primary boot drive and most will default to that if a M.2 is present.

*If you have an M.2 and a SATA drive during OS installs be aware of which is which when installing windows as you may think disk 0 is the one you would want to install to when it is really disk 1. Can be extra confusing when they're the same size like in my system.

[WLJ]

Another oddity to watch for is many motherboards have multiple banks of SATA connections and one bank may or may not be usable if an M.2 is present as the M.2 may depending on the MB use that bank's entire channel for the necessary bandwidth for all that extra speed. This can create a pull out the manual to the motherboard moment because which bank gets the axe may or may not be marked on the motherboard.

[Brad Johnson]

Revisit because I finally got to a point I'm comfortable pulling the trigger. Just clicked Buy on a WD Black SN850X 1tb as the OS/app drive and a WD Red Plus 4tb for data. May try to do the swap this weekend but need to verify we can still get into SWMBO's MS account in case things go pear shaped.

Fortunataly there's very little in the way of data on her machine. Our critical data and all the photos/music are on my old machine. Getting Outlook data moved over will be my next adventure, I have almost 20 years worth in my old machine's Outlook profile.

Brad

[HeroHog]

I just did it with my new-to-me notebook swapping out the original 256gb for a 1tb I had in my old laptop. Only thing I used was Macrium Reflect. I did a complete backup of all the volumes to a .5tb thumb drive/rescue "disk", swapped the drives, booted from the thumb drive, wiped the 1tb drive, "restored" the backup letting Reflect utilize all the remaining free space onto my D: volume, rebooted, PROFIT! It was truly that simple!

I'm posting from it now. It is my only laptop as the old one was flakey and upon cracking the case I found that my battery was pregnant!

[Brad Johnson]

...aaaaaand done. Typing from the upgraded machine now.

A few hiccups, mostly self-induced. First was not installing the M.2 drive and initializing. Not a big time suck, but took me a bit to realize what I'd done, and how to rectify. Second was when I started messing around with trying to set the new platter drive as the Windows Folders default destination. Got that well and truly hosed so gave up and did a fresh install.

Very, very, very much faster. Previously it was taking 3-5 minutes for the machine to be fully booted and ready to work, and that was after I did several rounds of cleaning and optimization. The new setup? Maybe 30 seconds, tops. Just finished loading Office under my work profile so we at least have that.

One BIG issue will be figuring out how to handle all the Outlook data from my old machine. I don't want to load it to Outlook under my work profile but I need the data because it has 20 years of history, including all our financials. Options? Is it possible to run a standalone Outlook 2021 as personal email along with Office 365 apps locally installed and operating under my work profile? I'd prefer to not pop four bills on the full Office 2021 Pro suite, but if I need to I guess that's that.

Anyway, thanks all for the hints, suggestions, and advice. I would probably be throwing expensive things at expensiver things right now if it hadn't been for y'all's help.

Brad

[Hawkmoon]

One BIG issue will be figuring out how to handle all the Outlook data from my old machine. I don't want to load it to Outlook under my work profile but I need the data because it has 20 years of history, including all our financials. Options? Is it possible to run a standalone Outlook 2021 as personal email along with Office 365 apps locally installed and operating under my work profile? I'd prefer to not pop four bills on the full Office 2021 Pro suite, but if I need to I guess that's that.

As I posted some time back: https://softkeyworld.com/product/microsoft-office-2021-professional-plus/?currency=USD

As to Outlook, I don't know of any way Outlook from Microsoft 365 can coexist with Outlook from Office Pro 2021.* Depending on what you need from Outlook, you might be able to use eM Client for your personal stuff. https://www.emclient.com/

There's a free tier that allows two e-mail addresses. I only use it for e-mail so I don't know what bells and whistles are disabled in the free tier.


* Except to install Office Pro 2021 on a virtual machine, which will keep it isolated from your work MS 365 programs.

[lee n. field]

...aaaaaand done. Typing from the upgraded machine now.

A few hiccups, mostly self-induced. First was not installing the M.2 drive and initializing. Not a big time suck, but took me a bit to realize what I'd done, and how to rectify. Second was when I started messing around with trying to set the new platter drive as the Windows Folders default destination. Got that well and truly hosed so gave up and did a fresh install.

Very, very, very much faster.

"Told ya."

Previously it was taking 3-5 minutes for the machine to be fully booted and ready to work, and that was after I did several rounds of cleaning and optimization. The new setup? Maybe 30 seconds, tops. Just finished loading Office under my work profile so we at least have that.

One BIG issue will be figuring out how to handle all the Outlook data from my old machine. I don't want to load it to Outlook under my work profile but I need the data because it has 20 years of history, including all our financials. Options?

I assume you have you old outlook data as a pst file.

Make a second outlook profile and set up a mail account in that.  Attach the pst file with your old outlook data as an additional data file in that profile.  Set Outlook to ask which profile to use on startup.  All this can be done in the Control Panel Mail applet.

Ideally I'd keep it on a computer not associated with work.

Is it possible to run a standalone Outlook 2021 as personal email along with Office 365 apps locally installed and operating under my work profile?

Don't know, but probably not.

[Brad Johnson]

Ideally I'd keep it on a computer not associated with work.

I've decided to pop for our own Office 2019 Pro suite. We've both used Office 365 on the home machines under our employee perks because, well, free. With SWMBO retired, she no longer has privileges. I can, and already have, loaded office under my work user identity so we at least have something. Unfortunately, security provisions surrounding its use regularly get more invasive. With that in mind, I want to completely divorce the machine from work. I can justify the cost since we saved at least a grand by upgrading the current machine versus buying a new one. I'll probably do that today or tomorrow. I'll have to nuke the O365 local app install, but a cursory Google search doesn't seem to indicate any undue consequences.

I assume you have you old outlook data as a pst file.

My old machine which is where I do all my work and keep our financials. Outlook is installed and used from there. The machine has dual drives and I regularly copy the pst file over to the second drive for backup reasons (Not export, copy. Export does weird things sometimes). What I'm thinking of is doing a full data backup to the second drive, including the Outlook profile, and transferring data by temporarily swapping the drive to the newly upgraded machine. If I'm reading correctly, once Ofc2019 is installed, all I should have to do is open Outlook, initiate an IMPORT, and point it to the existing pst file on the temporarily-installed drive. Can anyone confirm it's that simple? After all is said and done, I can pull the old machine's drives for safekeeping.

I'd be tempted to use the old machine as a basis for a NAS build if it weren't for a distrust of fifteen year old power supply and system board components. As it is, I'll probably donate it to some worthy person/cause. It's still plenty fine for generic workflow tasks.

Brad

[lee n. field]

I've decided to pop for our own Office 2019 Pro suite. We've both used Office 365 on the home machines under our employee perks because, well, free. With SWMBO retired, she no longer has privileges. I can, and already have, loaded office under my work user identity so we at least have something. Unfortunately, security provisions surrounding its use regularly get more invasive. With that in mind, I want to completely divorce the machine from work. I can justify the cost since we saved at least a grand by upgrading the current machine versus buying a new one. I'll probably do that today or tomorrow. I'll have to nuke the O365 local app install, but a cursory Google search doesn't seem to indicate any undue consequences.


My old machine which is where I do all my work and keep our financials. Outlook is installed and used from there. The machine has dual drives and I regularly copy the pst file over to the second drive for backup reasons (Not export, copy. Export does weird things sometimes).

The only things I've ever had issues with have been contacts and calendar, and I like to do them separately anyway.

Is this an email account that's still in active use, or just for archival reference?  POP, IMAP or Exchange?

Outlook since (I forget which version) now puts pst files by default in a easily findable sane and sensible place (c:\users\<username>\Documents\Outlook Files).  Before that, buried somewhere in c:\users\<username>\appdata.  IMAP ost files still get put there.

My recollection is, when setting up an Outlook mail account, it will ask if you want to use an existing pst, or create a new one. 

There is a way to save off Outlook account settings.  Some registry key I'd have to look up. Export that, import on new, dump all the files in where they are expected.  All you have to remember is the mail password.  I can dig up the method if necessary. 

Lots of options.

Why, BTW, use Office 2019 when 2021 is available?

What I'm thinking of is doing a full data backup to the second drive, including the Outlook profile, and transferring data by temporarily swapping the drive to the newly upgraded machine. If I'm reading correctly, once Ofc2019 is installed, all I should have to do is open Outlook, initiate an IMPORT, and point it to the existing pst file on the temporarily-installed drive. Can anyone confirm it's that simple? After all is said and done, I can pull the old machine's drives for safekeeping.

Yes, that's one way, and yes it's pretty simple. 

I'd be tempted to use the old machine as a basis for a NAS build if it weren't for a distrust of fifteen year old power supply and system board components. As it is, I'll probably donate it to some worthy person/cause. It's still plenty fine for generic workflow tasks.

Brad

[Brad Johnson]

The only things I've ever had issues with have been contacts and calendar, and I like to do them separately anyway.

Is this an email account that's still in active use, or just for archival reference?  POP, IMAP or Exchange?

Outlook since (I forget which version) now puts pst files by default in a easily findable sane and sensible place (c:\users\<username>\Documents\Outlook Files).  Before that, buried somewhere in c:\users\<username>\appdata.  IMAP ost files still get put there.

Okay, office 2021 then. I'm not picky.

It's my personal ATT.net account that I used everyday. According to AT&T, they have provisions for both POP and IMAP configs. Suggestions on which is superior?

I know where the pst file is as I regularly copy it to my old machine's second drive as a backup/precaution. I'm hoping the "Do you want to use an existing pst?" option is still valid. That would make it easy. I plan on copying all the old machine's data to its second drive (which I already do anyway as a backup strategy), pull the drive, connect it to the upgraded machine, and copy over the data (including aforementioned pst file). Once there, I'm hoping all I have to do is select the "use existing pst" option, point it to the file, and done. I just wanted to know if I was missing something important in my haste.

Brad

[lee n. field]

Okay, office 2021 then. I'm not picky.

It's my personal ATT.net account that I used everyday. According to AT&T, they have provisions for both POP and IMAP configs. Suggestions on which is superior?

IMAP.  Mail stays on the server, thus you see the same mail on whatever you have a mail client set up.  Phone, webmail, Outlook, whatever.  But, Outlook stores local cache in an "ost" file, not the pst.  Thus, my suggestion above to attach the existing pst as a second data file in outlook, dedicated to old mail.

POP3 is old, appropriate when you have a really constrained mail quota.

I know where the pst file is as I regularly copy it to my old machine's second drive as a backup/precaution. I'm hoping the "Do you want to use an existing pst?" option is still valid. That would make it easy. I plan on copying all the old machine's data to its second drive (which I already do anyway as a backup strategy), pull the drive, connect it to the upgraded machine, and copy over the data (including aforementioned pst file). Once there, I'm hoping all I have to do is select the "use existing pst" option, point it to the file, and done. I just wanted to know if I was missing something important in my haste.

Brad

[Brad Johnson]

Making sure I'm not making a mistake in going with $440 Office 2021 rather than a $100/yr Office 365 Family subscription.

I have this thing about subscriptions, mostly to do with someone else controlling access to docs, files, etc. if I choose to kill the subscription. If I go with OF365, I presume I can install apps locally, but do they extend their little controlling electronic fingers into the arena of post-subscription file access? If I drop the subscription, do I lose those locally-saved files or are they considered my property and left alone?

Also, does OF365 force you into OneDrive? I frigging HATE OneDrive, mostly because it's caused me no end of grief in the past when it decided it needed to universally control files (deleted important local files when all I wanted to do was remove them from OneDrive and got pissy when I tried to make it not do that).

How invasive is authentication in OF365? Will it require me to do anything other than load and use it, a la some type of TFA strangeness?

Sorry for all the questions but Microsoft's web site is less than helpful, and wading through the unbelievably huge sea of information surrounding OF365 has proven more than my limited patience will take today.

Brad

[lee n. field]

Making sure I'm not making a mistake in going with $440 Office 365 rather than a $100/yr Office 365 Family subscription.

I have this thing about subscriptions, mostly to do with someone else controlling access to docs, files, etc. if I choose to kill the subscription. If I go with OF365, I presume I can install apps locally, but do they extend their little controlling electronic fingers into the arena of post-subscription file access? If I drop the subscription, do I lose those locally-saved files or are they considered my property and left alone?

Also, does OF365 force you into OneDrive? I frigging HATE OneDrive, mostly because it's caused me no end of grief in the past when it decided it needed to universally control files (deleted important local files when all I wanted to do was remove them from OneDrive and got pissy when I tried to make it not do that).

How invasive is authentication in OF365? Will it require me to do anything other than load and use it, a la some type of TFA strangeness?

Sorry for all the questions but Microsoft's web site is less than helpful, and wading through the unbelievably huge sea of information surrounding OF365 has proven more than my limited patience will take today.

Brad

I do not know 365 very well at all, to be able to answer your questions.  MS would dearly love to get everyone locked into a subscription version (that sweet sweet recurring revenue). 2019, at the time, was said to have been the final standalone version.  (Yeah, and there wasn't supposed to be a Windows after 10.  OK, whatever.)

With what I am familiar with, I know you can turn off saving to Onedrive.  Exactly where and how, you'll have to google for it.

[cordex]

You own files you create with M365, but obviously once the subscription is dead the applications stop working.

M365 defaults to OneDrive for a lot of things, but you don't have to use it.

M365 prefers multi-factor authentication through a cell phone app, but you can probably still set it up without it.  I also prefer MFA, so no problem for me, but it has been an issue with some users at work who either lack room on their phone for the app or just refuse to have anything work-related on their personal phone.  They are making it harder to use text-based MFA as well.

[Brad Johnson]

M365 prefers multi-factor authentication through a cell phone app, but you can probably still set it up without it.

Is that for online access, or a locally-loaded instance? I can understand for enterprise environments and/or scenarios heavily biased towards multi-site online use, but this will be a home machine with apps loaded locally and SWMBO & I as the only users. Idly curious hands will be held at bay with the Windows lock screen.

Brad

[cordex]

Is that for online access, or a locally-loaded instance? I can understand for enterprise environments and/or scenarios heavily biased towards multi-site online use, but this will be a home machine with apps loaded locally and SWMBO & I as the only users. Idly curious hands will be held at bay with the Windows lock screen.

In the instances I manage, MFA is required for logging on and initial setup.  Once applications are installed no MFA is ordinarily required to continue to use them.

[Brad Johnson]

With what I am familiar with, I know you can turn off saving to Onedrive.  Exactly where and how, you'll have to google for it.

In the instances I manage, MFA is required for logging on and initial setup.  Once applications are installed no MFA is ordinarily required to continue to use them.

Good to know on both accounts. Thanks!

*edit to add* Just dawned on me that if I go the OF365 route, I won't have to install anything. I should just be able to log out of my work identity and reactivate under the personal license. Or so my simple thought process presumes...

Brad

[Brad Johnson]

All done. Another couple of self-induced hiccups, but otherwise no major issues. We're now 100% running on a single machine.

I finally had enough sense to check my employee discount page. 30% off Office 365 Family subscriptions (personal, not work identity). Sign me up.

Migrated data from the old machine yesterday. Used the "swap old drive over" method. Loading old Outlook data was a big nothingburger. Select IMPORT, point to the .pst file, click GO.

Windows Backups is doing ... something. There's a file on the secondary drive that's the right size. Still making manual backups, though. Secondary drive is 4GB so plenty of room to play with. I'll also continue periodically copying critical data to a portable drive I keep in the basement. Old machine's drives removed and stored for safekeeping.

And for my next trick, converting the laptop to NVME...

Brad

[Calumus]

A few things for people trying similar adventures.

Not all M2 slots are created equal. Some are nvme, some are sata. Nvme slots can also use sata drives; but the reverse isn’t true.

The link Hawkmoon posted is a legit copy of Office. It’s gray market, and usually sourced from a manufacturer who over bought licenses and is trying to cut their losses; but it will absolutely activate with Microsoft.

Due to my experience with installing literally hundreds of solid state drives over the last 13 years or so, I’ll only use Samsung Evo drives. I’ve had every single other brand fail including the Samsung QVO drives. Not one single EVO has gone belly up. (Yet)

NVME is the latest and greatest; but most people will not notice and difference between it and a sata ssd in normal everyday use. These days the CPU is the limiting factor in boot time etc. I’m running a 14th gen I7 and was underwhelmed when I switched over. Main reason I did it was because the motherboard I used in my build has 3 M2 slots and 6 sata and I wanted the sata for platter drives.

Lastly, if a hard drive starts making noise it’s a replace it right now situation. It could last you 6 months, it may not ever boot again after you shut it down this time. There’s no way to tell. SSDs have gotten cheap for smaller sizes, don’t wait if there’s any way to avoid it.

[Brad Johnson]

Laptop upgraded. Typing on it now.

Also took the opportunity to replace the battery. It had degraded to a point where 30 minutes was about all you got, and that was in extreme low power mode. As of right now, I've been on the new battery for about 1.5 hrs and it sill shows over 50%. Nice.

Backing up what little data is on the machine took way longer than expected. In terms of processing power the machine is a hoss, but data transfer was always slow. I presumed it due to some property of the hard drive and got solid confirmation of such with the new drive. Made the mistake of migrating data before I disabled OneDrive. It kicked off and started syncing files in the background before I noticed. It didn't hurt anything so I just let it run, unlinking the PC once done.

I left the old primary drive in the machine. Yeah, it's slow, but it's still functional and will be fine for non-critical storage. Did run into and issue with the machine popping up a "Which Windows do you want to use?" message. Fixed with a quick MSCONFIG change, but not before I almost got myself into real trouble by selecting the wrong instance for deletion. Fortunately, I realized what was about to happen before it was too late.

We don't use this machine much any more, but when we need it we really need it. Usually comes into play when we're travelling. I have a work laptop but hesitate to take it on personal travels. I can RDP into my desktop from this machine and be just as functional. Also nice to have if something needs done and we don't want to be stuck on home office desktop.

Anyway, done playing Computer Tech for a while (hopefully). Now, to a cold beverage and being blissfully useless for a bit.

Brad