Hello All,
I recently bought a Dell XPS 8930 computer with a 1Tb HDD hard drive and 16Gb Optane memory in the M.2 slot. My plan was to remove the Optane memory and replace them with a 500Gb Samsung 970 EVO M.2 drive.
I copied the contents of the HDD to the Samsung drive, replaced the Optane drive with the Samsung drive and unplugged the HDD.
When I turned on the computer, it failed to reboot. I re-installed the original drives and rebooted successfully. Only then did I research how Intel Optane drives work. See
https://www.howtogeek.com/317294/what-is-intel-optane-memory/In short, certain files usually stored on the HDD main drive are moved to the faster SSD Optane drive. This boosts speed.
In order to move the operating system to the 500Gb SSD, I needed to first copy the content of the Optane drive back to the HDD and then disable the Optane drive. Only then will I be able to clone the HDD drive and move the OS to the SSD.
The link below explains how to do this.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000024626/memory-and-storage.htmlI have yet to do this. My plan is to make a backup of the HDD before I copy the contents of the Optane drive back to it. That way, if something goes wrong, I'll be able to return to the current state.
I'll report back after I complete the migration.
Ralph Sutter
