Easily Clone HDD to SSHD in Windows 11/10/8/7 (Secure Boot)

Should you choose SSHD?

Solid State Hybrid Drive (SSHD), a physical storage device, is integrated by fast storage medium like NAND flash memory and a hard disk drive. If you need to upgrade your hard drive, an SSHD is a good choice. You do not need to reinstall Windows and programs as you can clone HDD to SSHD along with everything on it.

By increasing the flash memory to prefetch the data, SSHD has improved performance. You may find this generation of hybrid drive can not only provide a better performance, but reduce the read and write times of hard disk, which can cut down the power consumption and increase the battery life of laptops.

SSD in a hybrid drive is just like a cache for the data stored on the HDD. It can keep the copy of the most frequently used data on the faster SSD to improve the overall performance.

SSHD vs HDD: detailed comparison

Feature	HDD (Hard Disk Drive)	SSHD (Solid-State Hybrid Drive)
Technology	Spinning disks (platters)	Combination of HDD and integrated SSD
Speed	Slower compared to SSDs/SSHDs	Faster than HDD, slower than SSD
Performance	Limited by mechanical movement	Better performance due to SSD cache
Durability	Sensitive to physical shocks	More durable due to SSD cache
Cost	Generally more affordable	Intermediate cost between HDD and SSD

What do you need to clone HDD to a hybrid drive?

• A working computer (desktop or laptop) with Windows 11/10/8/7 installed.
• An SSHD drive. You do not need to initialize the new drive before the cloning process.
• Cables or adapter to connect the new drive. You can either connect the SSHD internally or externally.
• Cloning software.

To ensure the clone process goes smooth and the cloned drive boots fine, using a proper hard drive cloning tool is key. Luckily, you can use AOMEI Backupper Professional, the best disk cloning software for Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7.

AOMEI Backupper has perfect support for SSHD to ensure that you can upgrade your HDD to SSHD successfully, and it offers three clone types to meet your diverse needs.

• Disk Clone: transfer everything from the old hard drive to the new drive.
• Partition Clone: copy a specific partition to another partition, such as copy D drive to E drive.
• System Clone: clone only OS to another drive. It is useful if the destination drive is smaller than the source drive.

Steps to clone from HDD to SSHD without reinstalling Windows

Take Seagate SSHD as an example. After you connect the new SSHD to your computer along with the original hard drive, you can follow the 5 steps below to run Seagate clone HDD to SSHD.

Note: If the SSHD contains any data, make a backup first. Otherwise, you'll lose the data after cloning.

Step 1. Download AOMEI Backupper. Install and launch it. 

Step 2. Select Disk Clone under the Clone tab.

Step 3. Select the original hard drive that you want to clone as the Source Disk. Then click Next.

Step 4. Select the Seagate SSHD as the Destination Disk and click Next to continue.

Step 5. Check the box of  SSD Alignment and then click Start Clone on the final page to run this operation.

✍ Tips:

• If your SSHD has larger capacity than the source disk, you can select Edit Partitions to edit the partition size on the destination disk, so it will not leave unallocated space after the clone.
• If you need to clone every byte on the hard drive, which will take more time, you can select the checkbox before Sector by sector clone.

When the cloning process is complete, which will not take long, you can switch the boot order in BIOS to boot from the cloned drive.

Bonus tip: how to clone hard drive without SATA-to-USB cable

If your laptop has only one drive bay and you do not have an adapter to connect the new drive externally, this tool offers the backup and restore feature to help you upgrade to SSHD without reinstalling Windows. The whole process is as follows:

1. Create a disk image of the old HDD and create a bootable media with AOMEI Backupper.

2. Swap HDD for SSHD.

3. Boot your computer from the bootable media and AOMEI Backupper will load up automatically. Go to Restore > Select Task/Select Image File and follow the wizard to restore the disk image to the SSHD.

Summary

It is quite simple to clone HDD to SSHD using AOMEI Backupper. The program supports all kinds of HDDs, SSDs and SSHDs, regardless of disk interface and disk size. So you can also use it to clone HDD to Crucial SSD, clone SSD to larger SSD, etc. Try it right now!