AOMEI Backupper
How to Clone Windows to External Hard Drive (Bootable)
In need of cloning Windows to external hard drive and making it bootable? Free download powerful cloning software -AOMEI Backupper to do it easily and quickly.
By Ivy Updated on December 11, 2024
Can I clone a hard drive with Windows 10 on it?
"I have a computer with Windows 10 preinstalled. But the hard drive for my computer run out of space and I want to clone Windows 10 (including OS, installed app, drivers, etc.) to external hard drive. Can I clone entire Windows 10 to an external hard drive and boot from the cloned drive? Any kindly advice will be appreciated."– Reddit
After a long time of use, your disk is old and fragile, you may encounter many problems, such as:
- your disk not having sufficient space,
- your computer running slowly or stopping responding from time to time, etc.
Thus, you may want to clone Windows to external hard drive to replace or upgrade old disk for more space or better performance. You don't need to reinstall Windows & programs. Or use it as a backup copy in case of system or disk issues.
To make it, you need a reliable disk cloning software.
What's the best software to clone Windows?
AOMEI Backupper Professional is worth trying if you want to copy Windows to external hard drive. It will inlude the operating system, customized settings, installed programs, personal data, etc., and make the cloned drive bootable. It applies to all Windows PC systems, including Windows 11, 10, 8.1, 8, 7, XP, and Vista.
AOMEI Backupper- No bundled software and 100% clean.
- Clone HDDs/SSDs and MBR/GPT disks (e.g. clone MBR disk to GPT without converting).
- Clones only used sectors (default) of a hard drive, making it easy to clone hard drive with different size.
- Clone and resize hard drive(if it's large) without unallocated space left.
- More importantly, it helps to improve SSD disk performance, such as faster reading and writing speed, and longer lifetime.
- In addition, it also supports the System Clone feature. It is to clone OS only and requires less disk space.
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100% SecureHow to clone Windows to external hard drive step by step
Here take copy Windows 10 to external hard drive to show you the cloning steps. Before start, please get the following things prepared:
- A larger or smaller HDD, SSD, or USB external disk. Be sure its capacity is 👍 enough to save data on the old disk, or the cloning process will fail.
- Prepare a USB to SATA or M.2 adapter, depending on the interface of your external hard drive.
- Check the partition styles of the old disk and external disks. Make sure that they both use GPT or MBR.
- Backup files on external hard drive if there is any important data. The cloning will overwrite data on it.
- Download and install cloning software - AOMEI Backupper Professional. For server users, try AOMEI Backupper Server.
By default, this software uses the Intelligent Clone feature to clone a hard drive. So it will be OK if the target disk is smaller. Just follow the steps below to learn how to copy Windows 10 to external hard drive. It also applies to Windows 11, 8, and 7.
Step 1. Select a cloning method.
Open this utility, and select “Clone” and “Disk Clone” on the main page. To clone only OS, please click “System Clone” instead.
Step 2. Select the source disk.
It will display all available disks in the following window. Select the disk containing Windows 10 as source disk and click “Next”.
Step 3. Select the destination disk.
Select the external hard drive you prepare and click “Next”.
Click “OK” to continue this operation if you have already created a backup for your important data. If not, click "Cancel" and backup files to external hard drive first.
Step 4. Set your cloning settings.
Tick "SSD Alignment" if the external hard drive is an SSD. Click "Edit Partitions" and select "Add unused space to all partitions" and "Manually adjust partition size" to ensure your disk shows full capacity.
You can choose one of the two, depending on whether you want to extend unallocated space to all partitions or a specific one.
Step 5. Start cloning Windows.
Finally, confirm the cloning settings and click “Start Clone” to clone computer to external hard drive.
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Sector by sector clone: It clones all sectors of a drive, including empty and bad sectors, and makes the cloned drive use the same partition layout as the old drive.
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Edit Partitions: Except for adjusting the partition size of the destination disk, you can also use it to convert disk type (MBR or GPT), making it possible to clone MBR to GPT disk or vice versa and boot successfully.
After cloning Windows to external hard drive, you still need to check if the cloned drive is bootable with the following steps:
- Open the drive bay. Shutdown your computer, plug out all power, remove the hard drive bay cover with a screwdriver.
- Take out the original hard drive. Unscrew the screws holding the hard drive, then take out the existing hard drive at an angle(eg: 30 or 45 degrees).
- Installed the external hard drive back into your computer.
- Change boot order after replacing hard drive and boot from it.
Turn on your computer, hit the specific key in the initial screen (usually F2 or ESC) to access BIOS, go to the boot tab and use “+” to move the external drive to the first option, then press “F10” to save the change and boot from the cloned drive.
Written in the end
With the help of the best cloning software - AOMEI Backupper, you can easily clone Windows to external hard drive, even with different sizes or disk partition style. In addition, it can fix unallocated space left after cloning and further improve SSD disk performance.
AOMEI BackupperThe Best Software to Create Bootable External Hard Drve
Besides, this utility still provides users with many useful features. Thus, you can use it to create system backup, incremental backup, dissimilar hardware restore, create bootable USB, mirror folder to network drive, etc. Why not give it a try right now?
FAQs
1. How to initialize an external hard disk?
- Right-click it and select Initialize Disk.
- Then, select MBR or GPT and click OK. Note the partition style needs to be the same as your original disk.
2. How to check the disk partition style of external disk?
- 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.
- In the Properties window, select the Volume tab and confirm the partition style. It can be MBR (Master Boot Record) or GPT (GUID Partition Table).
3. Does Windows 10 have a cloning tool?
No, Windows 10 does not have a cloning tool. It offers users a system image software named Backup and Restore (Windows 7), using which you can restore system image to new hard drive. But it requires your new drive to be a larger one.
4. How to copy entire PC to external hard drive?
To copy entire PC to external hard drive, you need a reliable cloning software like AOMEI Backupper. It will copy everything on your PC and make sure the cloned drive is bootable.
5. How to transfer all files from Windows 10 to external hard drive?
- Download and install cloning software - AOMEI Backupper.
- Select "Clone" > "Disk Clone" in order.
- Select the disk containing all files on Windows 10 and click on "Next".
- Select your external hard drive and click on "Next".
- Click "Start Clone" to transfer all files from Windows 10 to external hard drive.
