How to Clone a HDD to SSD Drive
Installing a solid-state disk is one of the best way to upgrade Windows. Here in this tutorial, you will learn how to clone to a Solid State Disk (SSD) without reinstalling Windows.
Why need to clone a hard disk to another one? Here below are some details:
- Upgrade old hard drive to a new or large one.
- Make a backup: When using a computer, data loss often appears due to virus infection, system failure, partition damaged and more. In order to ensure data security, you had better back up the entire disk.
- Replace a hard drive with SSD drive: Usually, SSD is chosen to be as the destination disk by many of you since its outstanding merits, such as fast read-write speed, lower consumption, no noise and so on. Then to clone HDD to SSD will be an option to replace your disk for a good performance.
In these three cases, you can use the method of hard drive cloning to achieve your aim without reinstalling Windows.
Which One Is The Best Cloning Software?
Disk imaging software are quite essential in today’s environment, especially when ransomware attacks are on peak. You can move your operating system from a hard drive to SSD using such software easily.
Therefore, disk Cloning Software basically helps you to make copies of your computer’s information which can be restored any time later, preventing it from any damage or loss.
Here are the 5 best disk cloning software for your Windows to keep your data safe and secure:
Ease US Todo Backup Home
EaseUS Todo Backup Free is extraordinary compared to other circle cloning software for your Windows. The product is flawless, and straight forward and comes free of cost. With the help of this tool you can openly clone Windows 10 OS to new hard drive inside couple of minutes. You can utilize Disk Clone choice to clone the entire hard drive to another under Windows 10. Unlike the basic copy and paste, Clone will enable you to begin your PC and additionally program typically without reinstalling the system and other applications. Get it here
Macrium Reflect
Macrium Reflect is a free backup, disk imaging and cloning solution for personal and commercial use. Protect your data, upgrade your hard disk or try new operating systems in the safe knowledge that everything is securely saved in an easily recovered backup file. Get it here
Acronis True Image
If you’re an amateur, then Acronis Cloning Software can prove out to be one of the best disk cloning software you’ve ever used so far. Comes with a simple uniquely designed interface and bold icons. The features present in this computer imaging software are quite powerful which allow users to customize the cloning process, just how they want it. Get it here
Clonezilla
Regardless of whether there is a single machine or a bunch of computers, Clonezilla can perform disk cloning productively and rapidly. This disk imaging software makes the procedure simple and adaptable in many ways. Get it here
MiniTool ShadowMaker
MiniTool ShadowMaker is an all-in-one data protection and disaster recovery solution for PCs. It can back up your Windows Operating System, selected partitions, and even the whole disk. With a copy of backup, you are able to restore computer once a disaster occurs, like system crash, hard drive failure, and more.
The main feature of the program is to create backups of any physical disk that is connected to the computer it is run on without sacrificing important features such as compression, encryption or verification of backups.
The program supports a wide variety of additional features; these include creating bootable recovery media, disk cloning, and different backup schemes. Get it here
What You Need for Migrating HDD to SSD
When migrating to an SSD, things get a little more complicated. Instead of upgrading to a bigger drive, you're usually migrating to a smaller drive, which means a lot of files—like music, movies, and games—might not all fit on the SSD. You can back up your current drive, then delete all of your personal files, like your documents, movies and music. This will make your Windows installation small enough to fit on the SSD. Then, you'll clone your current drive onto the SSD drive and then format HDD. You can use the HDD for storage drive for your personal files. You'll then be able to reap the benefits of an SSDs speed while keeping all your documents and files readily accessible on a second drive.
If you have a laptop, this becomes a bit more difficult, since you only have room for one hard drive in your computer. You'll either have to get an SSD big enough to fit all your data, or remove your optical drive and replace it with a second hard drive. An external enclosure or adapter can also be use to connect HDD to your laptop.
Before you do, you should focus on some points:
- Clean up your drive for additional space. This is also the time to uninstall programs you aren't using anymore and delete unnecessary files that you don't want carried over to your SSD. Make one last uncluttering sweep with freeware CCleaner, which deletes old temp files and other space hogs, or at the very least run Windows Disk Cleanup wizard.
- Prepare a hard disk, for example, SSD or an external hard drive. Please make sure the disk space of the target disk is larger than or equal to the used disk space on your source disk. Otherwise, you are not allowed to clone hard drive to SSD or another disk.
- Connect your target disk to your computer. As you know, the computer can be divided into desktop and laptop. If you would like to clone a laptop hard drive, how to do? Actually, it is easy. Please connect your SSD via USB to your laptop and then start the cloning operation.
If you have done the above suggestions, now it is time to clone a hard drive to SSD in Windows.
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