My 1st experience with an M.

2 drive and
setup
I recently purchased an M.2 SSD A Samsung 970 EVO Plus in 1TB. It was to replace a 480 Gig
SSD, which was my operating system drive. I have four other drives installed; These are a
Seagate external drive (storage), and another 900 Gig external drive also for storage.
Additionally, I have a 3TB drive for documents Pictures and Music and 1.8 TB drive for games
the last two units are the traditional Spinning platter drives. I toyed with the idea of making the
480 Gig SSD that held my OS and making it a portable drive. That was short-lived as I had
another idea (that hit me after I uninstalled it and removed it from my machine (more on that
later) The blame is not mine for purchasing and installing the new drive. That falls to my POP,
Mentor, and best Father in law that a Tech head can ever have. I have a couple of vices (left) I no
longer imbibe spirits, gamble, or take crazy risks. The ones I have left are playing with the
configuration of my computers, gaming, and putting holes in paper on the range. All of those I've
done with my POP and had fun doing it…
That being said, this is how it went, I purchased the drive, and when it arrived, it was missing

the screws to install it. Currently, I am running

an ASUS B350 Motherboard. The drive
attaches to screw holes at the point indicated.
Please note that the drive packaging did not
contain the screws needed for installation. Yes,
that little screw. Four bucks later and a call to
Jeff Bezos, I was ready to start.
The Manufacturer recommends its software (free) to clone the drive. It did not work for me, but I
found another free product that accomplished the same task.
More on my system. It isn't top of the line, but it does meet my needs at the price point I
predetermined. 650 dollars. In that effort, the website www.Partspicker.com ensured that the
components that I selected would work together in the configuration that I thought of in the
concept phase of the build. This site brings my ideas in more line with reality; this is my system
configuration as of today.
 After installation and configuration, I removed the SSD that I was using as the system drive. I
was debating at one point using the SSD again after formatting as a portable drive. Then I
thought better of it (the next day), so it was open the case "again" reinstall the drive, then I put
my more memory-intensive games on it. I am in the process of moving my Steam Library to the
drive size permitting.
The performance received a significant boost. I estimate boot times were decreased by at least a
third. I know I should benchmark these data points before writing on them, but I erred on the side
of brevity. At 1st, I was a little intimidated because cracking the case and doing hardware
changes is not at the front of my mind seeing I haven't done that in years. I should get in practice
because I will be teaching the grandkids some tricks and teaching them how to do it as well.