Best Bootable Disk Clone Software: Clone Boot Drive Easily

Why we need bootable disk clone software?

As we move through our daily routines in computer use, we are often faced with all kinds of hard drive issues. Luckily, bootable cloning software can help us solve them. Here are the advantages of a bootable cloning tool.

• Avoid low disk space and get better performance. After installing a lot of applications and programs on the hard drive, you are likely to get “low disk warning” from your PC. Then, the bootable disk clone software glowing, because it can help you replace the original hard drive with larger one. Usually, laptop only has one internal disk bay. In addition, long boot time, slow reaction speed, hard drive failure and so on may let you want to do the cloning for better performance.

• Free you from reinstalling Windows. Boot drive cloning software will move everything including operating system on the hard drive to the target disk like SSD or bigger HDD. So when you want to replace or upgrade current hard drive with an OS on, there is no need to do a clean install of OS and all previously installed applications.

• Keep your precious personal files intact. Most importantly, the system configurations and precious personal files such as family videos and childhood photos that you cannot create again will stay there. Also, you can access your data without booting Windows using bootable media created by certain professional software.

What's important to bootable clone software?

Powerful cloning software should be able to perform different types of clone under different conditions. In a nutshell, the clone software for bootable hard drive should be embedded with these features.

👉 Intelligent Clone (clone only used part of source disk to target disk)

Since the old hard drive on your computer was purchased a few years ago and it cannot satisfy your pursuit of high performance, so you may want to replace HDD with SSD that comes to the market with advanced technologies, high price and low capacity. In this case, cloning old hard drive to a smaller SSD for replacement is inevitable.

👉 Sector-by-sector Clone (keep the same partition layout on target disk after cloning)

If you have enough budget and purchased an SSD, the cloning tool should allow you to keep the same partition layout of the old hard drive on the new SSD.

👉 Partition alignment for SSDs

SSDs have no moving parts compared to HDDs and you don’t have to defragment them. However, performing 4K alignment on SSD helps improve its performance. If you do not manually do 4K alignment, the computer will regard it as a cluster of 512 bytes through a method called Logical Block Addressing. That is not conducive to gain peak performance of SSD.

👉 Clone between different partition styles

There is a chance that your source disk and target drive have different partition styles. You need a bootable cloning tool which enables you to clone MBR to GPT disk without disk conversion and vice versa.

Fortunately, the professional Windows bootable cloning software AOMEI Backupper Professional happens to meet all said requirements and provides more helpful features like Edit Partitions during clone, Partition Clone, Dynamic Disk Volume Clone, etc. It is easy-to-use software that requires no professional knowledge and skills. It even allows you to clone HDD with bad sectors effortlessly. 

Download AOMEI Backupper now. Then, let’s have a closer look at the bootable drive clone software in the next part.

AOMEI Backupper

Easiest hard drive clone software for Windows PC.

FREE Download
Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7

How to clone boot drive in Windows 11/10/8/7

Case 1: Clone disk within Windows

If the current system can boot, follow the instructions below to clone boot disk.

Step 1. Connect the destination disk to your computer and make sure it is recognized in Windows.

Step 2. Install and launch AOMEI Backupper. Click Clone and then Disk Clone. If you want to clone only OS, you can click System Clone instead.

Step 3. Select current bootable disk as the source disk, and click Next.

Step 4. Select another disk as the destination disk, and click Next.

Step 5. Check SSD Alignment box if you plan to clone bootable hard drive to SSD. Click Start Clone after your configurations.

Tips✎...
• Edit Partitions is recommended when you clone disk to larger disk. That's because disk clone software will make an exact copy of original disk and leave unallocated space at the end. In this case, you need to adjust the partition size of destination disk with this feature.
• Sector by sector clone will clone both used and unused space on the source disk. Checking this option will make Edit Partitions unavailable.
• This software can also help you clone USB bootable drive, clone HDD to SSD via USB cable, clone Windows 10 to NVMe SSD, etc.

Step 6. Shut down your PC on completion. Replace the original boot disk with the cloned drive carefully and restart your computer.

Case 2: Clone disk without booting Windows

If the operating system cannot boot or you want to clone boot drive without booting Windows, you can try this way.

Step 1. Prepare a USB flash drive (larger than 13GB) and make a bootable media with "Create Bootable Media" feature in "Tools". Note that you need to create the bootable USB on another PC if the current system fails to boot.

Step 2. Boot up your computer with the bootable media.

Step 3. You'll find AOMEI Backupper is pre-installed in that USB drive. The rest steps are the same as in Case 1.

Troubleshoot boot error after cloning

If you find the cloned disk cannot boot after cloning, take it easy! You can check boot order or boot mode (UEFI or Legacy) in BIOS.

1. Check Boot Order: Start by accessing your computer's BIOS settings. Ensure that the cloned disk is set as the primary boot device in the BIOS boot order settings. If not, adjust the boot order accordingly.
2. Boot Mode (UEFI or Legacy): Determine whether your system is configured to boot in UEFI mode or Legacy mode. If the cloned disk is initialized as a GPT disk, it can only boot from UEFI mode. If the cloned disk is initialized as an MBR disk, it should boot from Legacy mode.

Visit cloned drive won't boot in Windows 10 for more details.

Verdict

As powerful Windows bootable disk clone software, AOMEI Backupper makes every step easy and neat. Even a novice can complete cloning breezily. If you have never used any boot disk clone software, you are supposed to get the basics seriously, including its advantages and features. 

Please note that professional software can make things simple when cloning hard drive in Windows 10/8/7 while non-professional software can get you into trouble. Therefore, choosing right software with mentioned features above is very important.