Quickly Clone SATA Hard Drive to SSD in Windows 11/10/8/7

Need to upgrade SATA hard drive to SSD

The SATA controllers and hard drives were first introduced in 2002, and they have been largely used since. If you ever want better I/O speed, cloning SATA drive to SSD will be the best upgrade nowadays. Meanwhile, regular SSDs are also using SATA, so you can easily buy an SSD to replace your SATA drive. 

Instead of reinstalling Windows and all programs on new SSD, you'd better transfer OS and programs from the old drive to the new drive. To make it, SATA to SSD clone software is needed.

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Prepare for SATA hard disk clone

To clone SATA drive to SSD, there are some things you need to check or prepare, especially for laptops.

1. Check your computer

• Check if your computer has a removable back panel, which ensures you have the access to hard drive. If not, you need to consult your laptop manual for instructions to get your hard drive or contact the computer manufacturer.
• Check the number of drive bays on your desktop/laptop, so you can choose to prepare an external SATA-to-USB adapter or SATA cable and power cable to connect the target SSD. 

2. Choose an appropriate SSD

• Confirm the right form factor and interface of the replacement SSD. It ensures you can install SSD on the original location of HDD. 
• Ensure the SSD has enough space to hold everything on the original HDD, otherwise the cloning process may fail due to insufficient disk space. 

3. Make a backup

Keep a backup of system or disk in advance. It can avoid data loss owing to cloned SSD won't boot issues.  

4. Download reliable SATA to SSD clone software

There are many disk cloning tools that can be used to clone SATA HDD to SSD. Here, AOMEI Backupper Professional is recommended for SATA to SSD clone because of its excellent performance and advanced features regarding hard drive cloning.

Additionally, it is so user-friendly that all the operations can be easily managed. Download and install AOMEI Backupper on your PC now!

AOMEI Backupper

Easiest hard drive clone software for Windows PC.

FREE Download
Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7

How to clone SATA HDD to SSD without reinstalling🔥

Please follow the steps below to clone SATA to SSD in Windows 11/10/8/7.

Step 1. Connect the target SSD

Connect your SSD drive to your computer and initialize it if you are asked.

Step 2. Choose "Disk Clone" in the cloning program

Run SATA to SSD cloning software. Then click the “Clone” button and then select “Disk Clone” to clone SATA disk to SSD. 

Step 3. Choose the source and destination disk

Click on the SATA disk to specify it as source disk and specify SSD as destination disk on the next screen.

Step 4. Configure cloning options and start copying data

At the Operation Summary screen, check the option “SSD Alignment” since the destination disk is an SSD. Then click “Start Clone” to run the SATA to SSD clone task.

💜 Related tips: 

👉 You can click Edit Partitions to resize partitions or convert partition style of the destination disk.

• 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 add unallocated space to any partition on the destination disk as you want. 
• Convert the destination disk from MBR (GPT) to GPT(MBR): It helps to convert the partition style of the destination disk if it is different from that of the source disk. 

👉 You can go back to do other work with this computer while the SATA to SSD clone is in process. This software will finish the task in the background.

Step 5. Swap SATA HDD for SSD

After cloning, you can switch out SATA hard disk and replace HDD with SSD using a screwdriver. Please remember to lift old hard drive up about 30 or 45 degrees, then pull it out. 

📖 Notes:
• If your computer is not bootable now, you can create a bootable media to load the software to clone SATA disk to SSD without loading Windows.
• If you only need to migrate OS to SSD in Windows 10 instead of the whole hard drive, you can choose “System Clone”.
• If you happen to encounter cloned SSD won't boot after clone, you can click the previous given link to learn more.
• Compared with SATA SSD disk, NVMe SSD has a much faster transfer speed. Thus, if you don't mind investing a little more, it's suggested to clone Windows 10 to NVMe SSD.

Bonus: Enable TRIM for SSD maintenance

To make your SSD can be correctly recognized, you are supposed to enable TRIM. Also, the use of TRIM can improve the performance of writing data to SSDs and contribute to longer SSD life.

If you are not sure if the TRIM is enabled, you can use the following command to check. The command prompt needs to be run as administrator.

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

If your screen is like above, please copy and paste the following command to enable TRIM.

fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0

Frequently asked questions: Clone SATA to SSD

Conclusion

Reading here, you probably know everything related to cloning SATA to SSD in Windows 11/10/8/7. And the SATA to SSD clone process is so simple with the help of AOMEI Backupper. After clone, you can directly use it to boot your computer, then you will be pleasantly surprised by the performance of your computer, such as faster loading speed, smoother gaming experience, etc.

Besides, AOMEI Backupper is still a backup and restore software, which can help you protect your system and data completely. You can use system backup, disk backup, partition backup and file backup according to your needs. Also, scheduled backup is indispensable on this software to backup your files regularly or at a specific role, including daily/weekly/monthly, event triggers, etc.