Successfully Installed Samsung 950 Pro M.2 on Razer Blade Stealth

I am happy to report that I have successfully replaced the stock 256GB PM951 drive with the 512GB Samsung 950 PRO using the steps below taken from the @hfm's thread here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-review-swapping-instructions-cloning.771316/

Before you start, just remember that opening the bottom panel to access the hard drive may VOID YOUR WARRANTY so please do this at your own risk. You are going to need a Torx 5 screwdrive and the set I used can be purchased here from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013B5EQBY/

The Samsung 950 PRO can be purchased here: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-950-512GB-PCIe-NVMe/dp/B01639694M/

How I cloned to these drives:

1. Use Macrium to create WinPE bootable recovery USB key flash drive.
2. Use Macrium to create a FULL PARTITION BACKUP of your Blade's original drive onto an external USB drive that can hold it.
3. Put the new empty drive in the blade, as above.
4. Boot the Macrium WinPE USB key: (hold F12 on boot when prompted to choose boot drive)
5. Select "Restore", Choose the backup file on the USB drive from step 2.
6. Choose the empty drive you installed in the Razer as the destination.
7. Restore away, will take some time depending on the speed of your USB drive.
8. Power down, disconnect all the USB stuff and try to boot.
9. If it works, YAY, if it doesn't.. I had to do this other stuff as well...
10. Reconnect your Macrium USB recovery KEY, boot from that again, this time without the old drive connected over USB
11. Attempt to fix the Windows boot problems again (same menu option). This time, it should actually work with all green checks.
12. Try to boot again, should work this time.
13. Thanks @mario64, they had to use AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition 5.6 to extend the new partition to the full free space of the drive.

Things to note:

• Macrium reflex makes backup and restore incredibly easy. It will back up all the partitions, INCLUDING a PERFECT copy of the Recovery partition on the stock drive
• When booting into the Macrium WinPE USB drive, the mouse for some reason doesn't work. You will need to do everything on the touch screen. Don't worry! It is touch friendly!!!
• After successfully restoring, you will notice that your new drive will have only 256GB instead of 512GB... Don't worry! Follow Step 13 above to fix that! Just Merge the partitions using the Partition Assistant Software!
• New drive is screaming fast!
• Thank you @hfm

 

Would you be able to test and show read and write speeds?

 

I've seen it asked, but not answered, on another forum. So here goes again,

Can a new SSD be installed simply via a USB bootable version of Windows 10? I have no previous apps to load and therefore default to a clean install. But does Razer tweak Windows 10 outside the downloadable drivers on their website?

I'm all in but still struggle with QHD vs UHD. I want better battery life and can't see a real need for UHD. Plus there's the scaling issue surfing the internet that I've seen mention. I guess I made my decision. QHD.

I had decided to wait until the Microsoft Store had one to put through a few hoops, but as of yet the Houston, TX store does not have any in stack. Also, sounds like Microsoft is only getting the UHD variant.

 

Wil the Toshiba OCZ RD 400 NVME ssd be compatible with Razer blade 14 (2016)?

 

Yes you can use a basic usb Win 10 install and then just apply the drivers from the Razer website. What you lose is the factory restore partition.

 

What about Windows 10? how would it be installed to the new driver? As far as I can see, you have only managed to restore the backup of the old drive from a USB drive using Macrium.

 

You can always slipstream the samsung NVMe driver into the windows 10 install media...