- Clone Pc Hard Drive Free
- How Do I Clone A Hard Drive With Disk Utility Windows 10
- How Do I Clone A Hard Drive With Disk Utility Free
Summary :
Click the destination disk to which you want to write a clone — this can be an external hard drive or an internal drive connected by an enclosure. Remember, this process will erase any data. To start the cloning process, select the source drive and then click the blue Clone this disk link listed underneath the drive in the main window. A new window prompts you to select a destination.
Don't know how to clone a hard drive to SSD without any data loss in Windows 10/8/7? Use MiniTool ShadowMaker and MiniTool Partition Wizard, the best disk cloning software, to easily clone a hard drive and create a bootable Windows 10/8/7 clone.
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Why Clone a Hard Drive
- Upgrade old hard drive
- Expand a small hard drive
- Make a backup
- Improve disk performance
Why Need to Clone Hard Drive
1. Upgrade old hard drive:
Usually, after a few years of use, a hard drive's firmware will start being outdated and the disk drive itself will start to wear out. Replacing the old disk with a new one minimizes hard disk failures and maintains your computer at its best performance.
2. Expand a small hard drive:
When you run out of disk storage space on your hard drives, clone the data to a larger drive to use the extra disk space without any data loss. Or you can choose to clone a small USB drive to a larger one.
3. Make a backup:
The backup purposes are that data loss and corruption can happen anytime to any computer. To secure your data, use a backupper to back up your hard drive periodically and as frequently as possible.
4. Improve performance:
Solid-state drive provides outstanding merits such as fast read-write speed, low consumption, etc. Therefore, upgrading your HDD to SSD will significantly improve computing performance.
So, how long does it take to clone a hard drive? How do you clone a hard drive in Windows 10/8/7? Keep reading to find the best way to clone a hard drive to SSD or a new hard drive easily.
How Long Does It Take to Clone a Hard Drive Windows 7/8/10
For this question, there are three main factors.
To estimate the time to clone your hard drive, the single most critical factor is to know how much data is on the disk that will be cloned. The more data, the longer it takes.
Additionally, determining the method used to clone the drive is also critical.
- For instance, cloning a disk to multiple systems needs two steps: you need to clone the original disk to a data repository (saved as an image file) and it will be cloned to the bare disk from there.
- If you clone a hard drive in Windows 7/8/10 for a computer upgrade, you can directly clone the original drive to another disk like SSD in the same computer. This way doesn’t have an intermediate step.
The last factor is the hard drives’ type. And sometimes, you also should consider the specifications of the system. The speed of the older disk could be the determining factor during a direct drive-to-drive transfer if you use an older drive technology to clone to a newer one.
In conclusion, the time to clone a hard drive to SSD is based on your actual situation and it couldn’t easily be estimated. In the following sections, we will show you how to clone a hard drive in Windows 7/8/10 to SSD with two different drive cloning tools in the same computer effectively.
How to Clone a Hard Drive with ShadowMaker
- Connect the disk you want to clone to computer
- Start the disk cloning software - ShadowMaker
- Select the source and destination disk
- Start the disk upgrading process
Clone Hard Drive Software – MiniTool ShadowMaker
You may ask: how do I clone my hard drive to a new one? As a matter of fact, cloning a disk is easy with a piece of disk clone software.
MiniTool ShadowMaker is the best free disk cloning program developed by MiniTool Software Ltd. to help clone a hard drive Windows 7/8/10.
It is also a piece of backup software, providing disk backup solutions including file backup and restore, partitioning, and most importantly, cloning. It can even clone a system drive to make a bootable Windows 10/8/7 OS. We highly recommend this safe and free solution for cloning disk. It also enables you to back up files to the network drive. With the backup image file, it allows you to perform the disaster recovery to restore your personal files.
Now, we will show you the full steps of cloning a hard drive.
Download a free MiniTool ShadowMaker Trial Edition for 30-day.
Further reading:
Before you start, connect a hard disk, for example, SSD or an external drive or an USB external drive, to your computer.
What if my SSD has a smaller hard drive space than my HDD? How to get imovie on windows. Can I clone a large capacity HDD to a smaller capacity SSD?
Yes! As long as the actual used hard drive space on your original hard drive (HDD) is less than or equal to the available storage space in your target drive (SDD), MiniTool ShadowMaker can clone your larger hard drive to smaller SSD. However, if the source disk uses more space than what is available in the target drive, it is not possible to clone all the content onto the target drive.
Now it is time to clone a hard drive. How to clone hard drive to SSD free in Windows 10/8/7, or how to clone a laptop hard drive? Follow the below step by step gudie.
Step 1: Connect to the Disk You Want to Clone
- Double-click MiniTool ShadowMaker to run it.
- To select whether you want to connect to a Local or a Remote disk, click the Connect button under the desired destination. For this example, we will choose Local.
Tip: From the main interface, you know MiniTool ShadowMaker is a piece of dedicated backup software. And you probably ask: How to clone a hard drive to SSD or an external hard drive?
Step 2: Start the Clone Disk Tool
- On the main User Interface, go to Tools page.
- Click the Clone Disk feature.
Step 3: Select Source Drive and Target Disks
- Select your source- the old disk you want to clone.
- Select your target- the new disk (SSD) you want to clone to.
- Click the OK button to start the process.
Tip: You can use MiniTool ShadowMaker to clone a bootable hard drive in Windows 10/8/7. That is, if you clone a system disk to SSD, the SSD will be bootable after cloning as long as you set it as the first boot order in BIOS.
Warning: During the cloning process, all data on the destination disk will be destroyed. After you have made sure nothing important is on the it, click Yes to continue.
Step 4: The Hard Drive Cloning Process
1. Wait for a few minutes for MiniTool ShadowMaker to perform the hard drive clone process. The cloning time is in proportional to the disk size.
2. After the process is 100% completed successfully, a pop-up window will ask you whether you want to shut down your computer now.
- You can choose to shut down at a later time.
- If you choose to shut down now, make sure you only connect ONE of your source or destination drive before you boot the computer the first time after the clone.
- If more than one disk is connected to the computer at boot time, one disk may be marked as offline by the Windows operating system.
- Only connect the disk you want to use at the moment.
As mentioned in this part, in most situations, you choose to clone a hard drive to SSD in Windows 10/8/7 rather than simply copying & pasting for disk upgrades, good performance, and disk backup. Due to different cloning needs, the specific operations are different.
① If you want to use and boot the operating system from the destination drive, you can mark the target one online by either:
- Shutting down your computer and remove the original disk.
- Keeping the original drive in your computer and changing the BIOS boot order to reboot from the new disk.
② If you only want to make a disk backup to the SSD or new hard drive:
After the cloning operation is completed, you can remove the target disk from your computer.
Tip: In addition to using Clone Disk to back up the entire disk, you can also use MiniTool ShadowMaker to make a drive image backup with its Backup feature.
If you are one of Windows users, looking for the best way to clone a hard drive Windows 7/8/10, click below for a free download of MiniTool ShadowMaker, professional drive cloning software, to begin cloning a disk from HDD to SSD.
Cloned drive won't boot? This guide shows you how to make cloned drive bootable in Windows 10/8.1/7 using the best hard drive clone software.
How to Clone a Hard Drive with Partition Wizard
- Select the source hard drive and start Disk Copy Wizard
- Select the target disk
- Choose the copy options
- Read how to boot information
- Apply the disk copy operations
Hard Drive Clone Software – MiniTool Partition Wizard
Upgrade to bluestacks 3n. In the above part, we show you how to clone a hard drive to SSD free in Windows 10/8/7 with MiniTool ShadowMaker. In addition to MiniTool ShadowMaker, MiniTool Partition Wizard is also the best tool to clone a hard drive.
How to clone a hard drive to SSD in Windows 10/8/7 with this clone hard drive software? Get a free download of MiniTool Partition Wizard and try its Copy Disk feature to clone data disk. Note that if you need to deal with the system disk, you need to get its Pro Edition or an advanced one. This Edition Comparison page may be helpful for you.
Note: Before you clone hard drive to SSD, you need to ensure that: - The SSD does not contain any important data because the cloning process will erase all data on the target disk.
- The available space on the SSD must be larger or equal to the used disk space on your source disk.
Step 1: Start the Disk Copying Process
- From the available disks, choose the hard drive you want to clone. You may choose the internal hard drive as source.
- Click Copy Disk from Convert Disk in the action panel or right-click on the source drive to choose the Copy feature.
Step 2: Select Target Disk
1. Choose the target drive to copy the content of the source drive to.
- All existing data on the objective drive will be destroyed.
- All data on the source hard drive will be copied.
2. Click Yes to continue the process.
Step 3: Select Partition Options
- Select whether to Fit partitions to entire disk(the target disk partition size will be adjusted automatically to fit the entire disk) or Copy partitions without resizing(the size of the source disk partitions will be used), according to your needs. In this example, we will use Fit partitions to entire disk.
- To improve the performance of your SSD, check align your partitions to 1MB.
- To clone your system disk to the GPT disk, check Use GUID Partition Table for the target disk.
Step 4: Boot from the Destination Disk
- To boot your computer from the destination drive, change the boot order in the BIOS settings.
- To only copy the hard drive, ignore this warning.
Step 5: Apply the Copied Partitions
- Preview and ensure all partitions are being copied to your new SSD.
- If everything is okay, click Apply. It requires you to reboot the computer and you need to wait for the process to be finished.
The above contents are the introduction of another disk clone software and the disk cloning solution.
Tip: To migrate system related partitions to another disk, MiniTool Partition Wizard also offers another key feature called Migrate OS to SSD/HD.
How to Clone a Failing Hard Drive Windows 10/8/7
Sometimes, bad sectors may occur on your hard drive after using the disk for a very long period. By then, various problems will happen especially hard drive failing, leading to unbootable Windows. To avoid severe data loss and computer boot problem, you can clone your hard drive as fast as you can.
Reading here, some of you may say: how can I clone the failing hard drive? Actually, it is also simple as long as you use a powerful hard drive clone software – MiniTool ShadowMaker or MiniTool Partition Wizard.
Before you start cloning a failing hard drive, you need to take an extra action: use CHKDSK to shield sectors by sectors that are bad. Just open the Command Prompt window with administrator privilege, input chkdsk d:/f /r and press Enter (d means the drive letter).
After that, you can use one MiniTool software to clone a damaged hard drive to another disk like SSD by following the instructions mentioned above.
Some Tips about Disk Cloning VS Copying VS Imaging
We have introduced you two disk cloning programs and two migration methods to clone a hard drive to SSD, whether the disk is failing or not. It is likely that many of you ask: why choose cloning hard drive rather than copying & pasting all data or disk imaging?
What are the differences between disk cloning, copying & pasting data to another disk, and disk imaging?
Hard Drive Cloning
Generally speaking, cloning hard drive is a highly efficient method to create an exact copy of a hard drive to another hard drive.
That is, not only files and applications, but system files, hidden files, and in-use files are also copied. Due to this nature, if you clone a hard drive containing an operating system, the new hard drive will also be bootable from that operating system provided that BIOS boot settings are configured accordingly.
![Drive Drive](https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/sg-s7fQTwsNzgtsB2rxRzsTtKWQ=/1764x1096/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/005_use-disk-utility-to-clone-macs-drive-4042367-5bc4e77946e0fb002698ce0b.jpg)
Copying and Pasting
Since some system files cannot be copied, you cannot create a bootable hard drive by simply copying & pasting files.
Disk Imaging
A disk image is a single file that contains all the files and data in a hard drive. The disk image file is not usable by itself. To utilize the data in a drive image, you need to restore the image file to a hard drive. Therefore, disk imaging is best used for backups. To image disk, the disk imaging software and the backupper - MiniTool ShadowMaker can do that and it also provides incremental backups.
In conclusion, cloning disk is the best and simplest method to clone hard drives to SSD for the best performance.
Bottom Line
In this post, we have shown you much information on clone a hard drive Windows 7/8/10. Now, it is your turn to get our MiniTool software to give a try!
If you have any question or suggestions while using our software to clone HDD to SSD, please feel free to let us know by either leaving a comment below or sending us an email via [email protected].
Clone a Hard Drive FAQ
You can utilize MiniTool Partition Wizard to transfer OS from HDD to SSD without reinstalling Windows. After getting this software, you can connect your SSD to your computer first. Launch it and select Migrate OS to SSD/HD. Then choose to replace the system disk or migrate OS only. After that, select the destination disk and follow the prompts to apply the change. Then the SSD will become a boot drive.
If you want to transfer Windows 10 from HDD to SSD, you can use the system migration tool MiniTool Partition Wizard to migrate Windows 10, which allows you to transfer Windows 10 from HDD to SSD without reinstalling. To do this, you need to connect the SSD to your PC; download and run MiniTool Partition Wizard; click Migrate OS to SSD/HD; choose to migrate Windows 10 only or migrate the whole Windows 10 system disk; select the SSD that you want to transfer Windows 10 to; follow the prompts to apply the operation.
The time varies from several minutes to hours. It depends on how much files you stored on the source hard disk and the drive transfer rates. An ATA-100 IDE drive claims a speed of 100MBps and a SATA drive can transfer 300MBps.
How to calculate cloning time? For example, to clone an ATA-100 drive which has 100GB of data stored on it, it should takes about 17 minutes if the cloning speed is 100MB/s. However, the time can be longer as ATA-100 drive will not be able to deliver 100MBps transfer rates in the real world. The real transfer rate that should be used to calculate a clone process should be lowered to about one half of that speed.
Connect the new SSD to your computer and make sure it is detected. Then get a hard upgrade tool - MiniTool Partition Wizard and click the Copy Disk Wizard. Select the original SSD as the source and the new SSD as the target disk. Then choose a copy method to clone your SSD to the new SSD. At last, apply the pending operation.
![How to clone hard drive to ssd How to clone hard drive to ssd](https://www.ubackup.com/clone/images/xbox-one-s-drive-upgrade-5740i/source-disk.jpg)
Position: How Tos - Backup & Restore - How to clone hard drive to smaller SSD?
Summary
This article provides two guides for cloning a larger hard drive to a smaller SSD, including cloning data disk to smaller SSD as well as cloning Windows 10 to smaller SSD. Replacing traditional hard drive with an SSD is a good move to improve computer performance, and yet the new SSD is usually smaller than original HDD. No worries, here you can follow steps below to clone bigger HDD to smaller SSD using free disk cloning software DiskGenius Free Edition.
DiskGenius - Free disk cloning software helps clone larger HDD to smaller SSD, migrate OS to SSD, etc.
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About cloning a larger hard drive to smaller SSD/HDD
Can I clone a bigger HDD to a smaller SSD?
'I have an old computer and I'm using about 30% of the 500GB hard drive. I'm afraid that the hard drive will fail to work someday, and it is really slow to load system or perform any tasks. The desktop is running Windows 10 and stores photos transferred from my mobile phone. I bought two disks, a 1TB hard drive and a 256GB SSD. I'm planning to clone the 500GB hard drive to SSD so that the computer can boot from SSD and get a faster speed. However, I have no idea how to clone or migrate OS from a bigger HDD to a smaller SSD! Is there free and simple software that can do this for me?'
An SSD is no doubt faster than a traditional hard drive, and many of us would like to upgrade computer by replacing hard drive with an SSD, for example, install Windows 10 on an SSD will greatly increase the booting process and the speed of reading/writing data. The recommended and referred way of swapping out a disk is via cloning disk, by which we can easily move content like operating system, settings, programs and data to another disk. However, the fact is that currently an SSD's capacity is usually smaller than a HDD's. So the question is how to cloning a lager HDD to a smaller SSD, for example, clone a 1TB HDD to 500GB SSD, clone a 500GB hard drive to 256GB SSD? The answer is using free disk cloning software.
Benefits of cloning HDD to a smaller SSD
Why do people want to clone hard drive to another smaller SSD/HDD? Here are some benefits of doing this:
- Create a backup: It is never a bad idea to create backups for important data, as hard drive can get damaged due to various reasons. Data loss will be a painful experience, which can be avoided if you have a recent backup.
- Upgrade hard drive: Any storage device has a lifespan, and it is necessary to swap out a hard drive which starts to develop problems. By cloning content to a new disk, you can keep everything stored on the original disk.
- Improve computer performance: it has been proved by many people that replacing system disk with an SSD can improve computer performance. Cloning system disk, including Windows system, settings and installed program, can save you the effort of reinstalling OS.
Get prepared for the disk cloning
- Prepare the SSD: since the SSD is smaller than the HDD, you should make sure the SSD capacity is larger than the used space of the HDD.
- Clean useless files: delete files you are not going to use from the HDD to reduce the time taken by cloning process.
- Clone disk VS migrate OS: Make the decision between disk cloning and system migration. When you want to clone Windows 10 to a new SSD, you are recommended to try system migration, which guarantees there is not booting issues about the target disk; whereas, if you want to copy everything from a data disk, you can just try disk clone.
- Find the free disk cloning software: A third-party cloning program will be used to complete the task, and yet you may find many paid programs by searching on Google. There is no need to spend money on such software, as there is totally free software to clone disk and migrate system.
Free hard drive cloning software, free download
DiskGenius Free edition is the recommended software to clone HDD to smaller SSD. This free edition provides multiple backup solutions, including cloning disk and system migration, both supporting cloning bigger disk to smaller SSD/HDD. 'Clone disk' function enables users to copy the entire disk as well as data to another disk, and a sector-by-sector copy can be made if the target disk is not smaller than source disk. System migration can help user transfer operating system and data from system disk to SSD/HHD.
DiskGenius allows users to adjust partition size on target disk before cloning process to better make use disk space. It also enables users to decide whether to clone a certain partition. Moreover, 4K alignment will be carried out during disk cloning and system migration, which means partitions on target disk will be 4K aligned. Apart from disk cloning, DiskGenius Free edition also supports to clone partition, backup partition to image file, copy sectors, backup partition table, etc. Hence, you can either backup a specified partition or entire disk. Free download DiskGenius Free Edition now and you can start the disk cloning task.
Guide 1: How to clone a larger hard drive to a smaller SSD/HDD?
Tips:
- If you want to clone system disk to SSD and make SSD bootable, it is recommended to follow Guide 2 to migrate system.
- If you want to create a sector-by-sector copy, please make sure the target disk is no smaller than the source disk.
Step 1 Click Tools menu and choose Clone Disk item to open the disk cloning wizard.
Step 2 Select source disk and click OK button.
The disk selecting window shows 3 disks, and the 2TB disk is the source disk that we are going to clone, and the 932GB disk is the destination disk.
Step 3 Select destination disk and click OK button. Here you should select your new SSD.
Step 4 Configure disk cloning settings.
1. You can decide whether to clone a certain partition, for example, right-click on a partition from source disk, and you can choose 'Do not migrate this partition' option which can remove the corresponding partition from target disk.
2. Partition size on target disk can be adjusted. Place the mouse on the arrow area between partitions and drag mouse. There is possibility that the partition size on source disk are not ideal, and you can adjust the size on destination disk to get better use of disk space.
3. Disk cloning modes: when target disk is smaller than source disk, only 'Copy all files' is available. If you want to use 'Copy all sectors' to create a sector-by-sector clone, the target disk's capacity should be equal to or larger than source disk.
Step 5 Click Start button to start HDD cloning process. Then click OK button to continue.
Warning: all partitions and files of the target disk will be removed and overwritten. Be sure there is not important files on target disk before clicking OK button.
Step 6 Select disk cloning methods between Hot Migration and Hot & Execute.
Hot migration is the recommended option, as it can clone HDD to SSD without closing current system or running programs.
Step 7 Wait for the process to complete.
Guide 2: How to clone Windows 10 to smaller SSD without reinstalling OS?
Do you want to clone Windows 10 to a smaller SSD so that you do not have to reinstall OS? Here is the solution. DiskGenius Free Edition supports to migrate Windows OS to smaller SSD via simple steps. Connect your SSD to computer properly and you can start to migrate OS to SSD now:
Step 1 Click Tools menu and choose System Migration option.
Step 2 Select destination disk and click OK.
Step 3 Configure settings for the OS migration.
1. You can decide the partition size on target disk to make better use of disk space. Two ways of change partition size: enter the exact number or drag mouse.
2. Boot settings. As to UEFI-based system, you can choose whether to change computer boot sequence immediately after system migration completes. It is OK to leave this option unselected, as you can modify boot sequence in BOIS manually when you need that.
Step 4 Click Start button to start the migration. Then click OK to continue.
Step 5 Select Hot Migration button.
Hot Migration enables you to clone Windows 10 to SSD without closing current system or reboot to WinPE environment. If you choose Reboot to WinPE button, computer will reboot and enter DiskGenius WinPE edition to complete rest task.
Step 6 Wait for the proves to complete.
If you did not select 'When finished, change computer boot sequence' option during migrating system, you will have following options regarding booting from source disk or target disk:
1. The computer boots from source system disk by default.
2. If you want to boot from the new SSD, you need to change the boot order in BIOS: restart computer > press the specified key such as F1, F10 to enter BIOS > select the new SSD as the boot disk > save changes and exit.
FAQs on cloning larger HDD to smaller SSD/HDD
1. Can I clone a larger HDD to a smaller SSD?
Yes, cloning a larger HDD to a smaller SSD is available now. DiskGenius Free edition can help you clone disk or migrate OS to a smaller HDD/SSD. But you need to make sure the SSD is larger than the used space of the HDD. How to watch tv on your computer.
2. How do I clone my hard drive to smaller SSD free of charge?
You can use DiskGenius Free edition to clone disk:
Step 1: Open DiskGenius Free edition, click Tools menu and select Clone Disk.
Step 2: Select source and destination disk.
Step 3: Click Start button and wait for the cloning process to complete.
3. Can I clone a 1TB HDD to a 500GB SSD?
It is possible to clone a 1TB HDD to a 500GB SSD and it is also possible to clone a 500GB HDD to a 250GB SSD. The only condition is that the SSD's capacity is larger than the used space of the source HDD. At this point, you can use DiskGenius to either clone disk or migrate OS.
4. How to migrate Windows 10 OS to a smaller SSD?
Following steps show how to migrate or clone Windows 10 OS to a smaller SSD:
Step 1: Launch DiskGenius and click System Migration option on the main interface.
Step 2: Select your SSD as the target disk.
Step 3: Click Start button to start the migration.
For more information about Windows 10 migration, refer to the guide: How to migrate Windows 10 to SSD?
5. How to clone GPT disk to a smaller SSD?
DiskGenius Free edition offers complete backup solutions and it can clone GPT disk to a smaller SSD for you free of charge:
Step 1: Start DiskGenius Free edition, then choose Tools > clone disk.
Step 2: Select source disk and target disk.
Clone Pc Hard Drive Free
Step 3: Click Start button.
How Do I Clone A Hard Drive With Disk Utility Windows 10
Conclusion
DiskGenius Free edition supports to clone disk as well as OS migration, making it possible to clone larger HDD to smaller SSD and clone Windows 10 to smaller SSD free of charge. Now you won't find any difficult in upgrading your computer or replacing HDD with SSD. If you feel this article useful, feel free to share it to your social communities. Should you have any questions or need help regarding cloning HDD/SSD, feel free to contact our support team.
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How Do I Clone A Hard Drive With Disk Utility Free
DiskGenius - The best cloning software to clone HDD to SSD, clone Windows 10 to SSD, clone partition, etc.
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