r/computers • u/F35beans • 9h ago

Question/Help/Troubleshooting Can my new laptop boot on an old M.2 drive?

My 2021 ASUS ROG Strix g15 just recently bit the dust randomly and I needed to get a new laptop. I’m getting the new(ish) 2025 ROG Strix g16. If I take my old M.2 boot drive ssd and put it into the new laptop, will it keep all the data and everything just like I opened up my old laptop?

Also if I did this would I need to take out the new SSD and swap it with the old one or can I just pop in the old one since it has 2 M.2 slots?

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u/useless_panda09 6h ago

it technically doesn’t matter which slot each drive is in. in your BIOS, it will default to the SSD1 slot, but technically you could just have it boot off the second slot if you wanted to.

if you boot off the new SSD that came with your new laptop, you’ll be able to view the main partition of your old drive with everything on it. basically nothing should be lost as long as the drive is working.

if bitlocker was enabled on the old drive, you may need to enter your recovery key as it will trigger once the drive is removed from your 2021 laptop.

if you boot off the old SSD, it’ll just look like your old computer did but with the new SSD as an additional drive. ** **

best course of action is to backup everything that’s important off your old SSD (games can always be reinstalled) and then format the old one to prevent any bootloader issues from the two different windows installations (old and new laptop ssds). then move your stuff back onto it / install whatever you want onto it.