How to Clone HDD to SSD in Lenovo Laptop (Bootable)

User Case

For this situation, one of the most common reason is that you didn’t change the boot order after cloning. Also, there's possibility that the disk cloning software failed to clone all the required data to boot Windows.

In any case, I’d like to introduce a reliable software and show you the preparations, detailed steps, and follow-up settings to make sure you can clone HDD to SSD with secure boot.

Procedure to clone Lenovo HDD to SSD

Cloning a hard drive allows you to copy all data on the disk to SSD, this is also the most direct way for OS and files migration. In the following, I’ll show you how to clone a disk in Lenovo laptop based on 2 situations:

Situation 1: laptop has more than one drive bay. 

You can install the SSD alongside the old HDD, and use disk clone software to directly migrate all the data from HDD to SSD. After cloning, you can either replace HDD with SSD, or keep SSD for OS and HDD for storage.

Sistutaion 2: laptop has only one drive bay. 

You could connect your SSD as an external drive with a USB cable. Then use disk clone software to migrate HDD to SSD. After cloning, you need to remove the internal HDD and replace it with the cloned SSD. 

Effecient and reliable disk cloning software

As for disk cloning software, you could consider using AOMEI Backupper Professional. It can help you clone Lenovo HDD to SSD easily and quickly, and ensure security boot at the same time.

It has some significant advantages when cloning disk:

• Clone disks of different size: It's supported to clone larger HDD to smaller SSD, or clone SSD to larger SSD.

• Clone regardless of partition style or firmware: This software fully supports cloning MBR and GPT system disks.

• Edit partitions: Adjust partition size and drive letter on the target disk. You can use it to assign unallocated space on a larger disk and solve cloned hard drive show wrong size issue.

• SSD Alignment: Align target SSD and therefore improve its performance of SSDs and extend its service life.

• Sector By Sector Clone: Clone all the sectors of a hard drive, including blank and logically bad sectors. It requires a target disk with larger or equal capacity.

These features will help you migrate HDD to SSD and make sure Lenovo laptop can boot successfully.

Preparations for Lenovo hard drive replacement

Example:

Suppose that you have a ThinkPad T450s with both a 42mm m.2 socket (intended for a small-capacity cache SSD) and a 2.5 inch bay for a primary hard drive or SSD that can take a 7mm or 9mm drive. Now, you have bought a 256 GB m.2 SSD and want to use it as the boot drive.

Preparations:

• The target SSD to receive the data.

• A screwdriver that fits the screws.

• Download and install AOMEI Backupper Professional.

Steps to install SSD in Lenovo:

Restart to access BIOS, then go to Config > Power > Disable built-in battery and press F10 to save the changes and exit. This will turn the laptop off.

Remove battery and pry the bottom off. Locate the M.2 slot which is normally hidden under a plastic flap, then slide the M.2 SSD into the slot.

Steps to clone Lenovo laptop HDD to SSD

Cloning HDD to SSD can help you migrate all the data, including OS, apps and personal files with very easy operation. Here are the steps:

1. Launch AOMEI Backupper. Click Disk Clone at the main page of Clone. To clone only OS, click System Clone instead.

2. Select Lenovo HDD as source disk and click Next. Then select the new SSD as target drive and click Next. If the new SSD has any important data, please backup files at first.

3. Tick SSD Alignment to accelerate its read & write speed and click Start Clone to execute the task.

Steps to backup HDD and restore to SSD on Lenovo laptop

In addition to disk clone, you can also try creating a full image of the HDD, and then restore it to the SSD. 

To create a disk image with AOMEI Backupper:

Launch AOMEI Backupper, click Backup > Disk Backup in subsequent, click Add Disk to select Lenovo hard drive. Select a destination to store the image and click Start Backup.

To restore image to SSD with AOMEI Backupper:

Click Restore > Select Task or Select Image File subsequently to locate the backup image, and choose Restore the entire disk and select the connected SSD as the destination. Click Next and Start Restore.

Tips:

• If you want to transfer only operating system, please use System Backup to create a system image.
• In case Lenovo laptop fails to boot, you could create a bootable media, which can be used to boot a faulty PC and perform backup & restore in WinPE.

How to boot the Lenovo PC from the target SSD

As mentioned before, if your Lenovo laptop has only one slot, you can shutdown the PC, remove the HDD and install the SSD instead.

If there's more than one slot, however, you can also keep the HDD as a secondary storage. This requires you to restart the PC, enter specific key to enter BIOS, and change the SSD as the first boot option. Then, press F10 to save the settings and check if the Levono computer will boot from the SSD now.

If yes, you can also wipe the old HDD with the Disk Wipe feature of AOMEI Backupper.

Wrapping things up

All in all, in order to make sure that the SSD is bootable, you could consider cloning Lenovo laptop HDD to SSD if your laptop has two or more drive bay, or backing up HDD to SSD when there is only one drive bay in laptop. However, the cloning process is much easier than backup and restore. If want to an easier way, you’d better use “Disk Clone” or “System Clone”.

If you want to protect unlimited computers within your company, you can pick AOMEI Backupper Technician. With the inbuilt AOMEI Image Deploy tool, you are also allowed to deploy/restore system image file on server-side computer to multiple client-side computers over network.