Best Way to Clone External Hard Drive over Ethernet Easily

Can you clone external hard drive over network?

Ethernet is a common networking technology that uses cables and connectors to connect devices in a local area network (LAN). Once you connect the external hard drive to a computer via Ethernet port or via USB port using a LAN to USB adapter, you can use Ethernet to clone external hard drives.

Cloning hard drive over Ethernet can be a secure and convenient way to migrate data between hard drives. In this article, I will explain how to clone an external hard drive over Ethernet and what needs to be aware of.

Why need to clone external hard drive?

Before we figure out what are the detailed steps to clone one external hard drive to another, we need to clarify why we need to do the task:

1. The hard drive space is not enough

The data stored on the computer disk occupies a large amount of space. Therefore, you need to copy all the data information to a new drive with more storage to achieve the purpose of disk expansion.

2. External hard drive damage

Hard drive used for a long time, there will be disk aging, serious wear and tear of mechanical tissue, etc., thus these disk physical failure may cause data loss.

3. Peace of mind.

Cloning external hard drive to another drive can give you peace of mind knowing that your data is safe. With such a backup, you can work on your computer without worrying about losing important data.

When you are in need of external hard drive cloning, you can directly take the help of a professional disk cloning tool provided in the following content to prevent data loss due to unpredictable disasters. Let’s check it together.

Best way to clone external hard drive on Windows 10 over Ethernet

How can we clone the disk over the network? The best way to clone an external hard drive on Windows 10 is to use a reliable disk cloning tool. Disk cloning software creates an exact replica of your hard drive and transfers it to another hard drive. This process ensures that all of your data, settings, and preferences are preserved.

AOMEI Backupper Professional is such a powerful disk cloning software for Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP that can clone a hard drive to another one over Ethernet with ease. Some of the powerful features that you can benefit a lot from are listed below.

♦ You can use the Disk Clone feature to clone disk over network. If you only want to clone C drive, System clone option can meet your need.
♦ It supports cloning various brands of external hard drives such as Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung, etc. regardless of its interface (e.g.: SATA, NVMe, PCIe).
♦ It allows you to clone external hard drive to multiple disk types such as an external USB drive, SSD, HDD, etc.

🚩 Make preparations before disk cloning over Ethernet:

1. Install the target hard drive on your computer. If you are using a laptop with only one slot, you can connect the target disk via a SATA to USB adapter.

2. Backup critical data. Remember that the target SSD will be overwritten during the cloning process. Therefore, if there is important data on it, make sure to backup the files beforehand.

3. Check partition style. You’d better make sure the partition style of the target disk is compatible with your boot mode (MBR for legacy BIOS and GPT for UEFI). Otherwise, the cloned hard drive may fail to boot up.

🚩 Then you can follow the illustrated guide to clone hard drive over network:

Step 1. Click the button below to get the disk cloning software download on your PC.

Step 2. After you have this tool installed on your PC, open it. Click Clone from the left side panel and then click Disk Clone.

Step 3. Select the current external hard drive you want to copy as the source disk and click Next.

Step 4. Select the destination drive you have connected to your PC and click Next.

Step 5. If your target hard drive is an SSD, it is recommended to tick SSD Alignment to improve the performance of the target SSD. Check and confirm your operating settings and click Start Clone.

✨ Warming notes:

✄ Edit partitions: You can resize partitions or convert disk type of the destination disk based on your needs.
✄ If your target drive is small, do not check Sector by sector clone, otherwise the cloning process will fail.
✄ Some users may encounter problems after cloning a hard drive - the cloned disk won't boot up correctly. Don’t panic, you can learn how to make cloned drive bootable easily.
✄ For computers with different hardware, you can use the Universal Restore feature to ensure your computer can boot successfully. 

Final words

Now you know how to Clone external hard drive over Ethernet by following the full guide above. AOMEI Backupper is a reliable disk cloning tool that can help you achieve this easily. It's easy-to-use interface and simple operations will save you a lot of time and effort.

Besides, it is more than a disk cloning tool, it can help you solve slow file transfer on Windows 11 with the fastest file transfer speed. You can also backup Windows 11 to USB and then restore the image in the event of a disaster, even dissimilar hardware restore. It is worth it to be your personal data protection assistant!