How to Clone All Partition to SSD with Secure Boot in Windows

Do I Need to Clone All Partitions to SSD?

"I have purchased a new PNY SSD drive and would like to clone all my partitions from the current hard drive to the SSD drive. One of my friends had encountered cloned drive won’t boot after cloning, which turned out he did not clone some boot-related partitions to SSD. I hope to clone all drives to SSD including boot related drive and my data drive. Is there any reliable cloning tool to assist? Thanks."

Cloning hard drive to SSD is a good way to upgrade disk for computer. SSDs, with higher performance, are more and more popular among computer users. Therefore, cloning HDD to SSD is not uncommon nowadays. However, how to do complete and successful disk cloning?

To replace your entire hard drive with a new SSD without reinstalling Windows system and applications, you need to clone disk including all partitions to target disk. But before you start, it is necessary to understand what partitions contain your hard drive.

Which Partitions Make up the Boot Hard Drive?

Most users plan to replace their primary disk that contains operating system with a new disk. For laptops, usually, there is only one disk so that all partitions are on the system disk. The partition structure would be hidden boot-related drives (system reserved partition or UEFI drive), C drive (system drive), and D and E and F drives (for installed programs and stored personal data).

For desktops where two or more disks may be installed, the partition structure for system disk would be only hidden boot-related drives and C drive, and maybe some favorite programs. A large number of desktop users will store personal data on the secondary disk to prevent data loss from system meltdown.

To perform a complete hard drive replacement, you need to clone disk all partitions. However, to complete the task, you need a reliable and powerful disk cloning tool.

How to Clone Entire Hard Drive Including Partitions to SSD

AOMEI Backupper Professional is comprehensive disk cloning software that allows you to clone all partitions to SSD or another HDD and ensures a successful boot. It offers two different cloning methods helping you clone hard drive to SSD with different sizes.

For example, to clone all partitions from large HDD to smaller SSD, you can do Intelligent Clone. This method clones only used part from the source to the target as long as the target can accommodate the used part. On the other hand, to clone all partitions from a smaller drive to a larger SSD, you can fit all partitions to the disk to avoid unallocated space after cloning.

The other cloning method is Sector-by-Sector Clone. The distinguishing feature of this method is it will clone every sector of the source disk to the target disk, no matter whether it is used or not. It requires the target must equal to or larger than the source disk. By the way, it is also a way to recover format or deleted files that haven’t been overwritten yet.

It supports Windows PC all systems including Windows 11/10/8/7/XP/Vista and has a lucid user interface. Get this tool to clone all partitions to SSD now. For server users, please try AOMEI Backupper Server. 

Detailed Steps on How to Clone All Partitions from Hard Drive to SSD

1. Connect the SSD to your computer. On laptops, you may need a SATA-to-USB cable. Make sure the disk can be detected.

2. Run the disk cloning software, and click Clone > Disk Clone.

★Tip:

In addition to Disk Clone, the System Clone function is very useful to intelligently select all required Windows installation and startup files on the source drive to the target drive to ensure a 100% successful boot after cloning.

3. Select the current hard drive as your source disk.

4. Select the connected SSD as the destination disk.

5. On the summary page, check the option “SSD Alignment” to improve SSD performance. You can click "Edit partitions" to resize the partition size or convert disk types if you want to. Note that checking the “Sector-by-sector clone” option will make partition editing unavailable.

• Copy without resizing partitions: It will not resize the partition size.
• Add unused space to all partitions: It will reallocate the unallocated space to each partition of the target disk, appropriate for the disk size.
• Manually adjust partition size: It allows you to extend unallocated space to any partition on the destination disk you want. 
• Convert the destination disk from MBR to GPT: It helps to convert the partition style of the destination disk if it is different from the source disk. 

6. Finally, click Start Clone to clone hard drive for all partitions to SSD. Wait for it to be completed.

7. Shut down your computer. To boot from the cloned SSD drive, you need to either replace HDD with SSD or change boot order in BIOS.

Related tips:

👉 The above steps apply to clone all partitions on SD card as well.

👉 To clone only system drives, please refer to transfer everything from C drive to SSD.

👉 The free version of AOMEI Backupper only supports cloning data disks between two MBR disks. You need to upgrade to the professional edition and then clone GPT to GPT, MBR disk to GPT, or GPT to MBR.

Both MBR and GPT are two different disk types for data storage. To check its disk properties in Disk Management, try the following steps:

• 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.

• Similarly, check the disk partition tyle of the destination disk. If it is still MBR, you can clone hard drive to SSD for free. 

👉 Except for cloning, when moving all partitions on laptops, you can also try the backup & restore feature with AOMEI Backupper. The steps are as follows:

• Create disk backup image for the current disk and storing to a place that you can access later.

• Then create a bootable USB drive, it helps you boot computer, even when it fails. 
• Afterward, shut down computer and replace hard drive with SSD, boot from the bootable drive, switch to the restore tab and select backup image, items, destination disk, click Start Restore.

Verdict

For a complete hard drive replacing, cloning all partitions to SSD drive is necessary. However, finding a reliable cloning tool is important as well. AOMEI Backupper does a great job of cloning disk to another disk, as it can clone HDD to SSD or HDD with different sizes using different cloning methods - Intelligent Clone or Sector-by-Sector Clone.

💡 Intelligent Clone	Selectively clone used sectors from the source, great for cloning large HDDs or SSDs to smaller SSDs.
💾 Sector-by-Sector Clone	Clone all the sectors on a source disk to the destination disk, helpful in data recovery.

What’s more, AOMEI Backupper is also professional backup software that could protect your computer with System Backup, Disk Backup, File Backup, File Sync, etc. features. You can also use it to create a recovery disk for your PC just in case. Don’t hesitate to get it.