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How do I clone my hard drive to SSD with OS?
It is easy to copy files from one hard drive to another, either HDD or SSD, but when it comes to clone hard drive to SSD with OS, you may find the copy and paste method does not work. Then, how do I clone my hard drive to SSD with OS?
Different from personal data, the hard disk with OS contains the operating system, system files, drivers, etc. Thus you cannot simply copy and paste them to another disk. In this case, you need to copy boot drive with the best disk cloning software.
Does cloning a drive make it bootable?
After getting how to clone a hard drive with OS, the second question you may encounter is if the cloned drive bootable after cloning. And how to make cloned SSD bootbale.
The answer is Yes, but sometimes users may find the cloned drive is not bootable. In fact, it’s possible you can’t change the boot priority for SSD disk or the hard drive and cloned SSD has different disk types, which also correspond to different boot modes (MBR for Legacy BIOS and GPT for UEFI). Thus, please be sure both disk use the same disk types, preferable MBR disk if you want to clone hard drive to SSD for free.
Best disk cloning software for Windows 10
Hard disk clone to SSD with disk clone software contains OS and make it bootable. To perform this process smoothly, you need one reliable software to clone hard drive in Windows 10 or other operating systems. AOMEI Backupper Standard is one such software and you can enjoy the following advantages during the cloning process:
- Clone all the data disk and MBR system disk for free.
- Clone only used sectors of hard drive in Windows 10. By default, AOMEI Backupper Standard uses intelligent clone method, and it only clones used sectors while skip bad sectors and empty sectors. Meanwhile, you can choose to clone all sectors of Windows drive.
- Don’t limit disk brands. Unlike software provided by disk brands manufacturer, AOMEI Backupper Standard supports all of disk brands WD, Samsung, Seagate, SanDisk, etc.
- Clone hard drive and align SSD disk performance. Sometimes you may find the cloned SSD becomes slow after cloning, this is because you cannot align the first sector of hard drive and SSD, thereby it will take double time to read or write data in a physical sector. This software helps you as long as you tick SSD Alignment feature before cloning HDD to SSD free.
To get started the process of cloning a hard drive with OS, please download this software to have a try!
How to perform hard disk to SSD easily with secure boot
Before cloning, please check the following things, otherwise your computer may fail to boot.
- Check disk space for hard disk and SSD. In general, this software requires the new SSD to have at least the same capacity as the disk space used by the hard drive in Windows 10. Type diskmgmt.msc in the Windows 10 search box and press Enter, then you can see disk capacity of them in the disk management.
- Check hard drive and SSD disk types. As mentioned earlier, they needs to be the same. The check method is simple, go to disk management again, check disk properties and partition style of them.
Then, continue to perform hard disk to SSD with free cloning software. It also works for cloning SSD to SSD in Windows 10.
- Install and launch AOME Backupper Standard, then click Clone and Disk Clone in order to perform hard disk clone.
- Select the hard disk with OS in Windows 10 and click Next.
- Select the new SSD to receive OS and data on the Windows 10 disk and click Next. It will ask you to confirm if your hard disk has important data and you backed it up. If not, please backup files to avoid any data loss during the cloning process.
- Tick SSD Alignment and click Start Clone to perform hard disk clone to SSD in Windows 10. The SSD Alignment features helps you align the first sector of hard drive and SSD, thereby improving disk performance.
Summary
You can easily perform hard disk clone to SSD with the help of free cloning software – AOMEI Backupper Standard. And it’s more flexible than software provided by disk brands manufacturer, not only suitable for all brands, but also clone larger drive to smaller drive, such as, clone 500GB HDD to 250GB SSD.
Besides, it is still the best cloning software for SSD, which allows you to clone SSD to new SSD, clone SSD to larger SSD, make NVMe bootable, etc.
