I personally would use Acronis to do this by making an image of my current drive, then restoring the image to the new drive. Acronis is paid software so it isn't for everyone (but it is by far the best way to create proper images of drives that can be browsed)

The Samsung software should be work just fine for your use though. Just add the nvme drive to your system, boot up to your HDD, run the program which will do its thing then turn off, disconnect hdd and boot to nvme drive.

I migrated between two Samsung Drives and it was a great experience once I figured out specifically which version of their software I needed lol

macrium reflect

dd

clonezilla

Thank you for your input, I'll just use the Samsung software then.
Is it necessary to disconnect the HDD if I can just use my BIOS to set the new drive as the boot? I intend to eventually wipe the HDD and use it as additional storage once I've confirmed the M2 isn't going to fail. I guess in that case I probably should disconnect anyway if I'm not going to use it for multiple days.

actually many options, varying where do I have to use it, i'll just describe what I use when I need to move my system and help friends with it:
- at home I use ShadowProtect SPX which was a piece of good software my company was selling before I left them, Acronis is also a good option, because it allows you to shrink your partition almost to amount of space which is taken, so if you have idk 100 GB of data and you want to move to a smaller drive like from 256 GB to 128 GB - that's a good option

otherwise a good piece of software is Clonezilla - it's absolutely for free compared to these two, it's based on dd with good compression, it's basically a set of scripts doing everything u need for moving a system and thus you don't have know Linux in order to use it

regards storage, I store my pc backups alongside with all etf2l things here: https://i.imgur.com/CSuq259h.jpg

i use raid5 on that storage, these are 4 2TB drives + data on the storage are snapshotted meaning even if get some ransomware, the storage probably will run out of space quickly and that will block saving any data on the storage + snapshot can easily restore data to the state which was before the encryption

For OS migration I just use Rufus with a 1 TB Drive so I can quickly install OSes quickly again after I partition the drive. Wait Is that what OS migration means? No? Oh. Well just use Clonezilla for OS migration like some people recommend.

Anyway for HDD backups I just put an OS installer in my HDD and then insert my important stuff in it afterwards. In general I'd rather waste some cash on some flash drives to make them install OSes and a few HDDs for my stuff (I have one HDD which I use for installing Windows, and I put my important stuff in there, but that's not much data protections to begin with), than rely on software (especially third party) to back up stuff for me.

The above is what I WANT to do, but haven't done yet.

stop posting

yea lemme just talk completely out of my ass and recommend others do things that i havent even done myself

No.

It's completely possible and it's something that I'm going to do. Plus I already installed OSes (Ubuntu, Debian (only the minimal version, because live CD wouldn't fucking work), Linux Mint (my current primary OS), and Windows (the current secondary OS) in the past with flash drives and I know that you can store extras stuff in the OS installer drive; I just haven't done this as a backup solution yet.

Not ideal in this case, that would copy all empty space.
It's not terrible to do it once, TRIM should take care of it anyway, and iirc the 970 Evo Plus show exactly 500/1000/2000 GB (1GB = 1 billion Bytes) of their 512/1024/2048 GiB (1 GiB = 1024^3 Bytes) with the missing Bytes split between overprovisioning and the SLC cache, so it's not like the SSD would actually be full and without OP, but this adds another problem: HDDs are usually a tiny bit larger than 1.00 TB by a model-dependent amount so a dumb image might not fit. Yeah, you can gamble and assume there's nothing on those last few Bytes of the HDD, your filesystem is most likely going to work, but why should you?
A filesystem-aware copy is a better choice.

I mean, he just asked what people use. dd is what I've used many times to clone OS installs since I find the hassle-free and headache-free nature of a bit-for-bit copy to be absolutely worth wasting whatever .00001% of an ssd's life on cloning free space. You're completely right about drive sizes though, a filesystem level tool would be better and easier if the destination drive is smaller, although there is the option of resizing partitions and then copying just the partitions and table with dd instead of the full drive.

Yeah, but at that point you're just doing what clonezilla does manually.
If you want to be pedantic he asked what he should use.
And should he use dd to use his windows installation, when he has probably never used it before, in a situation where it requires some manual fiddling and/or resizing partitions? No, probably not. Hell, usually you'd make a backup before messing with partitions, not mess with partitions to make a backup.

Oh, I did the math just for fun: It's actually 0.1667% * [percentage of empty space] of the SSD's rated write endurance. Like I said, it's not terrible to do it once, there's just no reason to.

I suppose I should have indicated somehow that I was responding only to the first question and not the second.

I use dd for OS migration, I have never had a single problem with it. Even my heaviest used ssd only has some 200 TBW, so I don't care about writing a few extra GB for an easy, convenient, reliable imaging method that always will work exactly how I expect it to. Are there situations in which using dd could be less than ideal? Indeed there are.

I didn't mean to argue about it, everything you have said is more or less correct.

Yeah, I do too for small server images, but instead answering the question "what software should I use" you answered the "what software do you use" and on top of that it's something he can't/won't/shouldn't use (windows user/windows user/SSD size problem).
So at best it's a thoughtless one word answer that contributes nothing, at worst it's a dick move.
It's basically the standard "how do I do X on windows" - "just use linux". Technically a solution, but not really helpful.

EDIT: Yes, I know it's in the title, but you know damn well it's not a survey.

is this gpt3

wait hold on i have a key for gpt-3 i think its time to make a shitpost bot

ok its been like 2 weeks and im ready to wipe my old hdd and use it for new storage now that everything was copied to the SSD, but i cant find any guides on how to do that. everytime i google "wipe storage drive" its all guides for resetting the boot drive / implied your computer only has one drive.

Just reformat it, you're not going to steal your own data, are you?
Remove all partitions, make a single big one, format with NTFS or whatever floats your boat, and you're done.

Write over with Zeros, ..... random data overwrite 27 pass erase DoD Compliant (5220-22) 21 pass Secure Erase magnetic media

Ah yes, just in case he tries to steal his own data from his own storage drive.

If its how to find the tool within windows you're looking for, just search for "Disk Management" in your Start Menu search, from there you can delete the partition and make a new one like #21 says.

I should have added a /s for ppl like you, sorry dog my bad ..

I tried putting a hint in my post to keep you from giving wrong advice, be it because you didn't read the question, didn't bother to consider what he'd need, or because wrong advice is oh-so-funny, but apparently it went over your head.

I just find that purposefully giving useless advice is a dick move and not that funny.

you have to be dangerously retarded to not realize it was a joke post

I'm baffled by your inability to read.

ty