Acer Nitro N50-600 series | Replacing Intel Optane with Samsung EVO 970 NVMe m.2?

What can I say, what a pain in the butt.  First off, some of the info on these forums are outdated. There is a user named @brummyfan2 who gave some great info back in 2018, but currently the information that he posted about the "free migration software" is NOT FREE ANYMORE. The migration option sits behind a $50 paywall. No Bueno. 

Firstly, there is a lot of disassembly required. You have to remove the HDD shield, the DVD drive and Shield, the faceplate of the rig, and make sure you disconnect the power. Try to keep in contact with the metal frame of the desktop PC while your hands are around the electronics also, it will help keep you from static discharge onto components.

BEFORE YOU REMOVE THE INTEL OPTANE: please open the file in windows called IntelRapidStorage. You need to disable your Optane memory. Once the software confirms it's been disabled--restarting several times possibly--you need to power off and remove the optane memory module. Once the rig is disassembled and the optane module is removed, reconnect your HDD and boot back into windows.
If the rig boots into windows, then you should be set and can skip the next several steps. If not, read on...



"INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE" Blue Screen of Death loop:
If you get this issue, you need to go into your BIOS (Acer Nitro N50-600 series) by pressing the Delete key on your keyboard. Go to the advanced tab like in the picture below

If for some reason you toyed around with this setting and changed it to AHCI or if it's in AHCI for any other reason, you need to change it back to 'RST with Optane'. The reason is because when windows is first installed the HDD is "paired" with the Optane memory module--much like a raid configuration. When your HDD doesn't 'sense' the Optane chip--even with it disabled in software--it will cause the drive to not boot into windows properly. Press F10 to save and exit, your PC will reboot and it should boot back into windows, albeit slowly. If, for some reason windows try's to get you to go into recovery at this point, tell windows to "continue to windows 10". Your PC should go into windows 10 properly--and very slowly. 

Now that you've caught up to the first group of people, please skip the next step.



"Help, my PC still won't boot into windows!!!" This next step is for you (hopefully):
So, you keep getting the BSOD loop eh? Windows wants you to pick from a menu to either destroy your PC data, scan your 5200 rpm drive--costing hours of your day--and you don't know what to pick! 
You're in luck, YOU--my friend--need to look no further than "SAFE MODE". Yes, for the low low cost of a couple clicks of keys on your keyboard, you should be able to boot into safe mode. If your PC allows you to boot into safe mode, then you are done, restart your PC and boot windows regularly. This should have temporarily fixed the problem so you can boot into windows like a normal PC owner--and can proceed to the next step. 

"I just booted back into windows and my PC told me my HDD had errors. Help!!!" This step is for you.
So you've booted back into regular windows yet windows gave you a notification like this picture below:




All is NOT lost, just click the prompt and follow windows instructions. It will take some time but windows will fix that pesky Optane glitch (stupid Intel drivers...) and then you can proceed to the final step:



GOOD JOB!!! You've reached the final step. Now that your PC is booted into Windows 10 like a normal person, do an internet search for "Samsung Data Migration tool" ONLY DOWNLOAD FROM THE SAMSUNG WEBSITE PLEASE!!! I won't be responsible for bad directions if you do something silly on a non-samsung website. 
THIS IS A LINK (current as of 4/19/2020) that takes you to their official website---> https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/
The tool you're looking for is under the "Samsung Data Migration Software for Consumer SSD" download the version you need and install it. Launch the application and follow the instructions AND WARNINGS carefully. The process takes a long while depending on how much of your original 1TB HDD is taken up. Mine had 574GB of data to transfer and it took about an hour. 

Then, do what tech saavy people do, and restart your computer and enter the BIOS. Make sure that the new SSD as set as primary boot device (if that option exists) Press F10 then call it a day and see what other problems arise that I didn't mention here. I'm sure this community is still vibrant and active, it currently is as of April 2020.