iATKOS | United Kingdom

Hey guys,

I'm running a dual-boot, dual-drive Hackintosh, and my 490GB SATA M.2 Windows drive (Crucial MX300 490GB) was running out of space so I just snagged a 2TB NVMe for cheap. Since my macOS SSD is a standard no-name 2.5" 220GB SATA drive, I figured I'd just wipe my existing M.2 Windows drive and copy the files from the 256GB drive over. In short, I'd be going from 490GB Windows + 220GB macOS to 2TB Windows + 490GB macOS.

I spoke with some people on the Windows front, and it seems like I'll be using Macrium Reflect to do the initial Windows SSD duplicate, but I'm not entirely sure how to keep going from there. My Hackintosh is over 3 years old at this point (still stuck on an NVidia GTX 1070 running High Sierra), so I'm booting with Clover. I've heard that OpenCore is much better, so it might be worth upgrading the bootloader as well. I'm trying to buy a 6800XT or 6900XT and upgrade to Big Sur at some point (I know that the drivers aren't there yet, but I don't need hardware acceleration and it'll be a while before they're restocked), so it seems like switching to OpenCore now would make sense.

Although I have a general plan of what to do, I'm not entirely sure how I should go about moving through with my hardware upgrade. Here's my current idea:

1. Clone Windows 490GB M.2 SATA SSD to new 2TB NVMe SSD using Macrium Reflect, and confirm that Windows can be booted from the new 2TB SSD and that all files are intact
2. Wipe Windows 490GB M.2 SATA SSD and format it for macOS; create new partition and install OpenCore on said SSD
3. Clone partition with macOS to new partition on 490GB M.2 SATA SSD; confirm that macOS and Windows can now be booted off the 490GB M.2 SATA SSD via OpenCore
4. Remove 220GB 2.5" SATA SSD from system, as it is no longer necessary; use system with 2TB Windows drive and 490GB macOS drive

I'm not 100% confident past step 2, and want to make sure that I know what I'm doing before I start copying drives around, so here are my questions:

• What software should I use to copy my macOS partition to its new partition on the 490GB SSD?
• Does a change to OpenCore make sense in my scenario? Are there any pitfalls I should be wary of?
• Is my plan missing any key steps?

When I set everything up initially 3 years ago, I remember there being some issues using NVMe SSDs, but I don't think it should matter here since my 490GB M.2 SSD uses SATA; ideally, macOS will never be touching my NVMe SSD.

Thanks so much for all the previous help that even got me to this point, I'm super grateful for the r/Hackintosh community!