Best Way to Clone Dual Boot Hard Drive to SSD

A dual boot hard drive means you installed two operating systems on the same hard disk, and the latter one does not overwrite the former. You can choose to boot from either of them at the startup of the dual system.

Speaking of this topic, you may have many questions, for example, is it possible to clone a dual-boot system?  Will the non-Windows system be cloned? What is the best way to clone a dual-booting Windows? That's what this article will talk about and let's have a glance at it.

• Situations to Clone Dual Boot Hard Drive

• Will Non-Windows System Be Cloned?

• Dual-boot Disk Cloning Software for Windows

• How to Clone Dual Boot Hard Drive to SSD

• Over to You

Situations to Clone Dual Boot Hard Drive

First of all, I want to tell you responsibly that cloning a dual-boot system is feasible. Cloning a hard drive with a dual boot system is very similar to cloning a single booting operating system drive. Then, see below and learn the common 3 situations. 

1. Clone disk to a larger disk for big capacity. Usually, the desktop computer has more than one drive bay holding drive while most laptop only has one. 

2. Replace HDD with SSD for better performance. In general, your computer will be equipped with a traditional hard drive, but it's not good enough for you to smoothly play large games or perform multiple tasks. 

3. Avoid reinstalling the operating system and programs. You will be suggested to reinstall Windows when your disk/system goes wrong owing to hardware failure, system crash, virus, file system failure, etc. But it's time-consuming and error-prone, not suitable for most users.

Will Non-Windows System Be Cloned?

In Windows-based operating systems, disk cloning software like AOMEI Backupper Professional will clone the entire dual-boot system effortlessly including the operating system, system reserved partition/EFI partition or other boot files, installed programs, and saved personal files, etc.

It's suggested to use the "Disk Clone" feature which will clone everything on the disk including both operating systems. Only the current operating system will be cloned if you use the "System Clone" feature in AOMEI Backupper. Therefore you need to clone twice.

Please note that if you have a non-Windows system on the existing computer, such as Linux, this software will not work since it is a Windows-based tool. You may refer to Clonezilla or other software.

Dual-boot Disk Cloning Software for Windows 

As you may know, this article will show you how to transfer dual boot to SSD or a new hard drive with AOMEI Backupper Professional, one of the best ways. Then, let's have a closer look at this software. 

AOMEI Backupper Professional is a trusted and reliable disk cloning software used worldwide and supports cloning hard drives including dual-boot and dynamic disk in Windows 7/8/8.1/10/XP/Vista. Also, system clone and partition clone are supported. The cloning process is the same as cloning a hard drive in a single operating system.

In addition, it has some useful features you may need.

• Clone disk to larger disk without left unallocated space. The disk cloning software will make an exact copy of the original disk, the cloned disk is exactly the same as the original disk and the extra space becomes unallocated and invisible. So, you need to adjust the partition size of the destination disk with "Edit Partitions" during the cloning process.

• Clone large HDD to smaller SSD with intelligent clone feature. With the help of intelligent clone, this software only clones used sectors, so you just need to ensure the used space on the old disk is smaller than or equal to the new disk.

• Clone MBR disk to GPT disk without converting partition style, and vice versa. In general, cloning disks with different partition styles need to convert the target disk first, but this software can do this for you during the cloning process.

• Improve SSDs' performance with "SSD Alignment". In a simple word, this feature makes your SSD have a faster reading & writing speed and can extend the life span of SSDs.

• Clone all sectors or not with "Sector by sector clone". This feature allows you to clone all sectors including unused ones. 

How to Clone Dual Boot Hard Drive to SSD

Taking Windows XP and Windows 7 as an example, to transfer a dual-boot hard drive to SSD, you need to prepare a blank SSD disk and download AOMEI Backupper Professional first. If your computer is a laptop, you still need a SATA-to-USB adapter or encloser to connect the SSD.  

Then, follow the stepwise guide to clone a hard drive with dual boot. 

Clone Hard Drive with Dual-Boot

Step 1. Connect SSD and make sure it can be detected. Launch AOMEI Backupper and select Disk Clone under the Clone tab.

Step 2. Select the Source Disk that you want to clone and click Next.

Step 3. Select your SSD hard drive as Destination Disk, then click Next.

Then, you will be asked to backup personal files before you start the clone operation. On this Wizard page, you can see that the existing data on the Destination Disk will be overwritten. If there is any important data, you would better backup files in advance.

Step 4. Tick SSD Alignment to boost the performance of the SSD disk and click Start Clone to clone the hard drive with dual-boot.

If the destination disk has a different partition style of the source disk, clone GPT to MBR, for example, please tick Convert the destination disk from MBR to GPT in the Edit Partitions feature. You can also use it to edit partition size if the SSD is larger. 

• 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. 

Notes: 
◓ Before cloning, please plug out an extra storage device, otherwise the image file may not be intact. 
◓ Please don't format the hard drive before you ensure the dual-boot system can boot successfully.
◓ After the dual-boot system can boot successfully, you could consider formatting the HDD and use it as storage if it still works well. 
◓ This software is also applied for SSD migration dual boot.

Boot from Cloned Dual-boot SSD 

Step 1. Swap HDD and SSD using screwdrivers. Please note that the disk needs to be tilted 30 to 40 degrees to prevent physical damage while removing and inserting a disk.

Step 2. Restart your computer and change the boot priority in BIOS. Press ESC or another specified key when you see a prompt like "Press ESC to enter BIOS" on the first screen, go to the Boot tab, and set the cloned SSD as the first boot option, then save changes and restart your computer. 

Over to You

AOMEI Backupper is a great choice for you to clone dual boot hard drives in Windows 7/8/8.1/10/11/XP/Vista. You can finish all the steps in a very short time. Moreover, you can flexibly edit partition size on the destination disk, speed up SSD, increase its lifespan, and have the ability to clone all sectors of your disk. Why not give it a try now?

In addition, it's still a professional backup and restore software that supports system backup, disk backup, file backup, incremental/differential backup, event triggers, USB plug-in, backup scheme, create bootable media, PXE boot tool, dissimilar hardware restore, etc.