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I don’t know much about hardware but wanted a little steam machine to do some gaming. I can’t find the exact one I bought anywhere. Every mention I find is ryzen 5. I’ll leave the the links below. I got 2 16gb ram sticks since I wanted things to run as smoothly as possible for what I had and got what I thought was the right ssd. I followed the specs given by a commenter on the computer but what I thought was addon wasn’t the right type of drive. Will I have to clone the original ssd so that the 1 terabyte one works? Will I need to buy a whole new windows key just to get this thing going if I replace the original storage?


www.amazon.com/Computers-Windows-Displa ... B0BQHBWPYX

www.amazon.com/Crucial-16GB-Laptop-Memo ... B08C511GQH

www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-MZ-V8V1T0B-AM-98 ... B08V83JZH4

It's real. You posted the link for it. The AM06 Pro with the Ryzen 7 5800U. It's just not yet listed in this section (I moved your post to this section).

Are you trying to use the 1TB drive to replace the drive the unit came with? If so, and you have the ability to do so, you can clone it, then install the new drive. It should boot. Or, you can install Windows 11 Pro on the new drive with a clean install, then install the drivers you saved from the original drive's Windows 11 installation. Make sure to have signed into your Microsoft account with the original installation first. The process I'm referring to can be seen here, starting with "That's one way."

Edit: Also, I had to remove the https:// from each of your links, as for some reason the forum won't show Amazon links when they have that in front of them. It'll just show a big, empty spot in the post where the links are when they have that. The forum designers are still trying to figure out why that is.

I was more so thinking they were lying about the specs because none of the versions of the computer I could fimd had that chip. I did plan to put the 1tb ssd in but a bit worried about how attempting to clone everything will go.

If you have the ability to do it, meaning the adapter and everything you'll need, it certainly won't hurt anything to try cloning it. A lot of people do it this way, especially when a system is set up the way they like it and there are a lot of files and such they don't want to have to transfer after a clean install. It's probably the easiest way to do it, and Microsoft expects people to upgrade their drives, so Activation won't be a problem. You won't need a new Product Key or anything like that.

But the OS is on the drive right? Won’t removing that drive remove the OS too? The drive isn’t going to come with an os preinstalled. Will putting the new drive in fresh out the box and powering on the pc harm anything?

Yes, the OS is on the drive right now. The unit comes with Windows 11 Pro preinstalled on that drive. If you clone it to the new drive, then the OS will be on the new drive too, and you can then replace the existing drive with the new drive.

Make sure to set the system up with the existing drive first. Meaning the initial Windows setup steps you have to go through when you start the unit, then the Windows updates and all that to bring it to current. You want to first set everything up as if you're going to use the unit as is, as in not upgrading the drive. Then, once you've done all that, you can clone the system from the existing drive to the new drive. Then replace the existing drive with the new drive and the system will then run off of that new drive, which will have an exact copy of what was on the drive the unit came with.

Or, you can do it the way I linked to, where you would install Windows from scratch on the new drive, but you would do that AFTER you've set up the system with the existing drive and signed into your Microsoft Account for the sake of system Activation, and after you've saved the driver folder from the existing installation, as you'll need to install some drivers after the clean install on the new drive.

This is more info on the clean install process, including a link to a guide on how to do it if you're not familiar with the process.

Whichever you do, just make sure not to wipe the existing drive, or at least not for now, as you want to first make sure the new drive is working as it should for a system drive. This way, if anything goes wrong, you'll always be able to reinstall the drive the unit came with, which will still have the system and will still work with the unit.

For reference, you'll need a USB to NVMe adapter in order to be able to clone the system from the existing drive to the new one. If you don't have that, I'd just go with the clean installation of Windows 11 Pro on the new drive, but make sure to read about the process if you're not familiar with it. And again, remember to save the driver folder from the existing system drive, which is in C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore. The folder you want to save is 'FileRepository'. You can just save the entire folder rather than each of the files within it. It'll be about 2.5GB to 4GB in size, so make sure you have enough room on the USB flash drive or whatever else you save it on. You'll use these saved drivers after the clean install, as Windows will need some drivers after install that you may not be able to get through Windows Update. It's also just a good idea to have a copy of the drivers on hand, in case you ever need them.

Lastly, if you're very new to cloning or clean installs and you're not very comfortable doing it, I'd have someone help you, if you have that option available.

Gabe:

Great explanation of the process.
I was contemplating going to a 2TB SSD in my AM06 PRO
Any suggestions as to the type to purchase?

is it a PCIe 3 or PCIe 4 ?
after looking at Amazon, my mind turned to mush, and I decided to just ask someone more knowledgeable.

dvdelf980,

Judging by what AMD says for the CPU (the Ryzen 7 5800U), it's PCIe 3, though either one would work, as PCIe 4 drives are backward compatible. The latter just would just operate at PCIe 3 speeds rather than PCIe 4. PCIe 4 drives can produce more heat though.

I imagine any good brand of NVMe drive would work. I used an XPG S8200 Pro in mine, as well as my AMR5, though only 512GB, and it works well. Others have used Samsungs, which is always a good brand for drives. Maybe something like the following...

www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-Plus-MZ- ... B07MFZXR1B

Thanks for your explanation, as well as your referral for the SSD .
You are a wealth of information, and I so appreciate the time and effort you put into answering all these questions.