Got a new nvme, best way to move OS to it?

I finally got my new drive in, but I am wanting your help for a few reasons.

So I do have two nvme slots, but here is the interesting thing, when I had another nvme in there, the samsung nvme would never thermal throttle and can actually hit 110C under load, and since there is a unified heatsink for both nvme drives, it makes the whole area get far to hot, so im probably better off using literally just 1 nvme. I do have a sata ssd, which I could store the whole operating system, and all it holds is my steam library, and I think I could move everything that isnt steam over there, and then swap nvme drives and see how this new drive performs. I've never done this since I have always been good with what the factory had to offer, but black friday came

The Drive is a brand new xpg SX8200 Pro model, and I mean the Pro model, not the standard model, and you would all see a review of it if you can help me out.

 

Best way?
Just reinstall windows onto the drive by booting to a flash drive or DVD with a bootable ISO, then choose the drive to be installed on. This will avoid problems and then you can manually reinstall what you need and then move the proper data files over from the other drive /user/(username)/appdata or documents folder (you may need to take full ownership of these folders first).

Cloning only works if your cloner doesn't suck *cough Easeus *cough*.

Trying to clone the drive may fail to allow windows to see the boot manager (something to do with shareware programs or some bad cloners (like Easeus) and GBT vs MBR partitions. Multiple people have had this problem due to the target drive being a different boot structure than the original drive.

Macrium Reflect should have no problems cloning the drive, but the free version will only clone devices of the same hardware (whatever that means). The paid version should work correctly.

 

Ok, Im fine with a fresh reinstall, but is there some way I can transfer all my windows settings, files I have saved around, and registry settings all in one fell swoop? Maybe even small programs installed like redist c++? I believe I can store all else with something like belarc, but windows settings, nvidia profiles, etc, and registry is what I want to save.

 

Yes, just reinstall the main programs and then copy the files from the place where the data is saved (like my documents/my games, or appdata/local (in Users......) or program files, wherever, over to the new folder. In some cases you can just reinstall a game to the new drive and then copy the entire folder from the old drive and overwrite it. It's really not hard. The old drive will still have everything intact as long as you didn't write to it.

the hardest part is finding where the data is. For example if your app stuff was originally in in C:\users/you/appdata/roaming/programishere and now its on D:\ etc, then after you reinstall the game or application, you just move the folder (NOT the entire /users folder) over.
It's really not hard at all.
Don't mess with the registry. I don't know why you would even need to deal with the registry. If its a CDkey or something that's stored somewhere then you can just export the key and import it back later..