AOMEI Backupper
A Good Way to Clone Hard Drive to External Hard Drive
You can clone hard drive or SSD to external drive easily and boot successfully with the help of the best disk cloning software - AOMEI Backupper Professional.
By Ivy Updated on September 9, 2024
Does anyone know of a good way to clone a hard drive?
I'm trying to clone an old image at work by using a program called Macrium Reflect. The original HDD is 500 GB, and I want to put it on a 256 GB M.2. I shrunk the partition of the 500 GB down to 57 GBs so it would fit. It seems to work when I look at the data within the program. It copies all partitions except for the Recovery partition, which I figured would be OK.
The only notable difference is that the drive letter is (E:), but I figured that shouldn't be that big of a deal. Does anyone know why the M.2 won't boot when I place it in a new PC? The new PC won't even recognize the hard drive.
If there's a better sub to post this in, please let me know, and thanks for any help.
Why clone hard drive to external hard drive?
For millions of Windows computer users around the world, cloning hard drive is becoming more and more common, especially cloning an internal hard drive to an external hard drive. Here are 3 main reasons behind it:
- Duplicate a copy for data security and easy access.
Cloning hard drive to external hard drive creates an exact copy of your HDD or SSD including all the data on it. And you can directly access your data at any time, anywhere.
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Clone HDD for disk upgrade.
The cloning process migrates everything including the operating system, system files, drivers, installed programs, personal data, etc. to external disk with larger capacity, or better performance, for example, clone hard drive to SSD. You can replace your system disk with it.
- Replace the bad disk.
If your internal disk has bad sectors or imminent failure, it's suggested to clone hard drive to external hard drive and switch disks to ensure the computer is always bootable.
The good way to clone HDD to external drive
Windows doesn’t include a built-in cloning feature in its range of backup tools, therefore, we must turn to third-party cloning software.
AOMEI Backupper Professional is a specialist disk cloning program that allows users to clone hard drive to external hard drive in s in Windows 7, 8, 10, and 11 easily and quickly. It can be HDD, SSD, and USB drive. You can also enjoy the following advantages:
✧ Bootable clone: It will migrate the operating system, system files, drivers, installed programs, personal data, etc on a hard drive and make sure the cloned drive is bootable.
✧ Two cloning modes: The default Intelligent Clone mode only clones the used sectors of a hard drive. Thus, you can easily clone larger HDD to smaller SSD without boot issues. It will skip bad sectors as well. You can also use the Sector by Sector Clone mode.
✧ SSD Alignment: It makes use of 4k alignment technology to align HDD and SSD, thereby optimizing SSD disk performance.
✧ Edit Partitions: It is able to adjust unallocated space on the destination disk manually or automatically, making it easy to clone hard drive without unallocated space left, and convert from MBR to GPT or vice versa.
AOMEI Backupper is free to download, and importantly it doesn’t include ads. Why not download it to have a try right now?
(PS: This software supports Windows 11/10/8/7/XP/Vista. For server users, try AOMEI Backupper Server.)
Step by step guide: clone HDD to external drive in Windows 10 or 11
In this part, I will show you how to clone HDD or SSD to external drive as an example to teach you how to use this cloning software. Before cloning, get the following prepared:
1️⃣ External drive like a larger or smaller HDD, smaller SSD, USB external disk, etc. Be sure its capacity is enough to save data on your original hard drive, or the cloning process will fail.
2️⃣ USB to SATA adapter to connect external hard drive (if your computer only has one slot). If your computer has two slots, directly slide your external disk into the slot and screw it tightly.
3️⃣ Initialize the external drive in Disk Management. Right-click it and select Initialize Disk. Then, select MBR or GPT and click OK. Note the partition style needs to be the same as your original disk.
Here are simple steps to check the disk partition style:
- Press Win + R to open the Run window. Then, type diskmgmt.msc and hit OK to open disk management.
- Then, right-click the disk you want to clone and select Properties in the pop-up window.
- In the Properties window, select the Volume tab and confirm the partition style. It can be MBR (Master Boot Record) or GPT (GUID Partition Table).
4️⃣ Backup files on external hard drive if there are any important data. The cloning will overwrite data and files on the target external drive.
Then, follow the steps below to clone HDD to external drive.
Step 1. Launch hard drive cloning software AOMEI Backupper, then you will see its deep-blue screen. Click Clone and then select Disk Clone in order.
Step 2. Select the original HDD on your computer as the source disk. Then, click Next.
Step 3. Select the prepared external disk as the destination disk. Then, click Next.
Step 4. Check the operation summary and click Start Clone to clone hard drive to external hard drive in Windows 10 or 11.
If your external hard drive is a large HDD, SSD or USB external disk, click "Edit Partitions" and choose "Add unused space to all partitions" or "Manually adjust partition size" to resize the partitions on the destination disk. Otherwise, you will find the cloned drive shows wrong size in Windows Explorer.
In addition, it still supports converting disk types (MBR or GPT) to prevent boot failure. Check this option if your HDD and external drive have different partition styles. Remember to check the SSD Alignment box to improve your SSD’s performance if it is an SSD disk.
Step 5. Wait until the process reaches 100% and click Finish. Then, replace your old hard drive and boot computer from the cloned external drive to make sure it's bootable. If you keep both disks connected, please change the boot sequence in the BIOS to make the external drive the first boot option.
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Check the Sector by sector clone box to clone every sector on the hard drive. Make sure the target disk is larger than or equal to the source disk, or the Start Clone button will grey out.
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If you want to migrate operating system to SSD, try the System Clone feature. It only migrate everything on the system partition instead of the entire disk.
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To get the best performance from the cloned disk, you could consider cloning Windows 10 disk to NVMe SSD. It has the fastest transfer speed among SSDs.
Please be aware that the length of time the cloning process takes varies from drive to drive. If you have a large drive with lots of data, the process may take a relatively longer time.
Conclusion
No matter whether you want a backup copy or need to upgrade or replace the disk, you can easily clone hard drive or SSD to external drive with the powerful cloning software - AOMEI Backupper Professional. In addition, this software even allows you to move hard drive to new computer in Windows 11 and boot successfully.
And it is crammed full of useful features and functions for managing your system. It enables you to backup your system to an external hard drive or NAS device, backup important files to cloud storage, and more! Why wait? Try it now!
AOMEI BackupperIf you are looking for a good way to clone HDD to external drive, whether it's a larger or smaller HDD, SSD or USB external disk, you can try powerful disk cloning software - AOMEI Backupper!
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