How to Fix Cloning Hard Drive SSD Taking Forever (5 Ways)

Learn the reasons why cloning hard drive to SSD taking forever and explore 5 proven ways to fix the issue, including the easiest solution. Keep reading for detailed insights.

By @Clytze Last Updated December 18, 2024

If you've recently tried to clone your HDD to an SSD, you might have been frustrated by how long the process took. While SSDs are generally much faster than traditional hard drives, cloning can still take a long time. In this article, we'll explore why cloning a hard drive to an SSD taking forever and provide 5 effective ways to speed up the process, including the quickest fix. Read on to find out how you can get your SSD up and running faster.

How to Fix Cloning Hard Drive SSD Taking Forever

For the beginning, this article will introduce 5 ways to fix this problem. You can choose the corresponding method according to your own situation. If you are not sure of the exact cause, you can also just choose the easiest method. You can continue reading for more details.

Fix 1. Check the CPU and Memory Usage

Sometimes, some programs can take up a lot of memory and make you encounter the problem of cloning hard drive taking forever. Before cloning your disk, make sure you have closed all your applications. Also, there may be some background processes that take up a lot of memory, and you can check your CPU or disk usage according to the following steps.

Step 1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Ese together to open Task Manager.

Step 2. In the Processes tab, look at the Process to see what is causing your hard disk high CPU or Memory usage.

If the CPU and Memory are very high and too slow, it is recommended to perform a disk clone with a highly configured computer.

Fix 2. Replace the Target Disk with a Healthy One

If you have problems with the target disk, such as bad sectors or read/write speed problems, then the most efficient way is to replace the old disk with a new one. And this is a very profitable investment because a new disk can be used for many years. You can refer to the following steps.

Step 1. Buy a new hard drive or SSD.

Step 2. Connect it to your computer with SATA and make sure it can be recognized by the computer.

Step 3. Run a secure and reliable cloning software to clone your hard drive to the new and healthy target disk.

Fix 3. Use the Free Disk Cloning Software (Easiest)

If the cloning hard drive to SSD taking forever problem is caused by a tool problem, then you can choose a free and safe disk cloning software like AOMEI Backupper Professional to help you. It provides Disk Clone, System Clone, and Partition Clone functions to meet your different needs. It also has the advantages below to solve the cloning hard drive to SSD taking forever problem due to different reasons.

AOMEI Backupper

Professional HDD and SSD Cloning Software

Secure boot: After cloning, you can successfully boot your computer from the cloned disk.
Intelligent clone: By default, it will only clone the used sectors so that you can clone a larger drive to a smaller one easily if you need to. Even if your source disk has bad sectors, it can clone a hard drive with bad sectors by skipping the bad sectors automatically.
Live clone: This software allows the cloning process to work in the background, so you don’t need to close any of the processes you are using.
Sector by sector clone: If your target disk is the same as or larger than the source disk, you can use this feature to clone all the sectors on the source disk, no matter whether they are used or not.
SSD alignment: If your target disk is an SSD, this feature can help you accelerate the reading and writing speed of the SSD.

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

100% Secure

Before you start the cloning process, you need to backup your important files on the target disk, because the target disk will be erased during the disk clone process. First, you should download the free cloning hard drive to SSD software - AOMEI Backupper.

If you are a Windows Server user, you can choose AOMEI Backupper Server. Then you can follow the graphic tutorial below to fix the cloning hard drive to SSD taking forever problem.

Step 1. Open the AOMEI Backupper and click Clone > Disk Clone.

Step 2. Choose the hard drive as the source disk. Then, click Next.

Step 3. Choose the SSD as the destination disk. Then, click Next.

Step 4. Tick SSD Alignment to make the target SSD perform better. Confirm your operations and click Start Clone to clone hard drive to SSD.

Note:✎...: Edit Partitions: This feature can help you to change the partition size automatically or manually. And it’s available in the professional version or higher versions. Upgrade to AOMEI Backupper Professional now.

Fix 4. Wait Patiently

If you are troubled with cloning HDD to SSD taking forever problem due to large data size, you need to be patient. People often ask how long it takes to clone a hard drive to an SSD. It depends on the size of the data you need to transfer, the speed of the cloning software, the computer device, the hard drive, etc. If your cloning speed is 100MB/s, it will take about 17 minutes to clone a 100GB hard drive. You can estimate your time and check the result after cloning.

Fix 5. Use SATA Connection

If the cloning hard drive to SSD taking forever problem is caused by a USB connection, you can choose to solve the problem with a USB to SATA adapter cable. A computer may have two types of hard drive connections. PATA (parallel ATA), also known as IDE, and SATA (serial ATA). Compared to PATA, SATA connections tend to be more stable and inside the cabinet, it prevents dust buildup or shock interference with the ports.

Why Cloning Hard Drive SSD Taking Forever?

There are many reasons why cloning hard drive to SSD taking forever, and this article summarizes the following common reasons for you:

Data size is too large: While the cloning process should not take too long, it will make a copy of the entire drive. Therefore, the larger the size of the data, the longer it will take.
The USB connection is slow to read and write: The USB cable is also one of the most important factors affecting the transfer speed. If the port is not healthy, the disk will be slow to read and write, which directly affects cloning performance.
Bad sectors on the source disk: If there are bad sectors on your hard drive, the cloning process will also be affected. This will also cause the cloning process to take longer than usual or even fail to clone.
Old computer configuration: An old computer configuration will slow down the operation and the cloning process will take longer to complete.
Target disk has bad sectors or read/write issues: If the target disk is not new and has been in use for a certain amount of time, it may have read/write issues or bad sectors, which will slow down the cloning process.
Tool problems: If the selected cloning tool is not good enough, it will also make the cloning process unsafe, ineffective, and very slow.

Summary

This article shows the possible causes of the cloning hard drive to SSD taking forever problem and 5 solutions to fix it. You can choose the corresponding solutions according to the different causes. You can also just choose the easiest solution - clone the disk with the free and reliable disk cloning software AOMEI Backupper.

It will not only help you clone your hard disk to SSD easily, even if your source disk has bad sectors, but it can also automatically skip the bad sectors for cloning. Whether you want to clone disks to large or small disks, it can meet your needs. And it can help the target SSD to speed up the read/write speed during the cloning process.

Besides, if you only want to clone the operating system or partition, you can choose its System Clone or Partition Clone functions. You can download this software to discover more useful features.