Guide | How to Migrate Hard Drive to SSD in Windows 10/11

Case: migrate hard drive to SSD

As SSDs grow in popularity, many want to upgrade HDD to SSD and keep all the old files, apps, and operating systems intact. A disk cloning tool can help with this process. This guide covers tools, steps, and key considerations for secure migration.

Best clone software to help you migrate hard drive to SSD

Compared to system image backup and restore, cloning is a more direct way to duplicate the hard drive and make the target SSD bootable. However since Windows OS does not come with such features, you will need to pick an effective disk cloning software.

Keep in mind that SSDs generally offer less storage than HDDs at the same price, so your new SSD might be smaller than your original HDD, which can complicate the migration. Choose a cloning tool that supports cloning a larger HDD to a smaller SSD.

AOMEI Backupper Standard stands out for cloning HDDs or SSDs on Windows systems (Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP/Vista) and offers these advantages:

◇ It's completely FREE to use unless you need advanced features and support.
◇ With the free Disk Clone, you can clone a hard drive to SSD without reinstalling the operating system and apps.
◇ The operation of hard drive data transferring is rather simple within in an intuitive interface.
◇ If your disk is small and you only want to clone Windows to SSD, here is a System Clone feature to clone only OS to the new SSD. You could upgrade to the Professional edition to enjoy it.

*The free Standard edition supports cloning all data disks and MBR system disks. If your cloning involves a system disk that is partitioned with GPT, then you need to upgrade to a higher edition.

How to clone hard drive to SSD with secure boot (step-by-step)

Before getting started, there are some preparations you should do:

◆ Connect the SSD to your computer and make sure it can be detected. If you are using a laptop with only one drive slot, then use a USB-to-SATA adapter or enclosure to connect the SSD as an external hard drive.
◆ Everything on the target SSD will be overwritten after cloning. So remember to make a backup first if there is any important data on the SSD.
◆ Download AOMEI Backupper Standard, install, and launch it.

*If your HDD had a major malfunction and Windows cannot boot up. You can also clone the hard drive to SSD via USB.

Now, I'll show you the approach to migrating larger hard drives to smaller SSDs in Windows 10 as an example.

Steps to migrate HDD to smaller SSD in Windows 10:

1. Click Clone on the left side of the interface, then choose Disk Clone.

System Clone: It's available in advanced editions and enables you to migrate only OS to SSD.

2. Select the source disk by clicking on the HDD you want to clone, then click Next.

3. Select the connected SSD as the destination. You can see it's smaller than the source HDD. Click Next to continue.

4. Tick the option SSD Alignment to improve SSD’s performance and prolong its lifespan. Then click Start Clone and wait for the cloning to end. When it's finished, you've successfully migrated HDD to SSD.

Sector By Sector Clone: The default intelligent mode clones only used sectors and enables you to clone larger to smaller disk. If you want to clone all the sectors no matter used or not, you can tick this option.

👉Tips: Edit partition size to make full use of a larger SSD:

In some cases, your target SSD may be larger than the source HDD, and the cloned SSD won't show full capacity after migration. To avoid this and make full use of disk capacity, you can try the Edit Partitions feature (supported by Professional and above editions):

• Add unused space to all partitions: Reallocate unused space to each partition, appropriate for the disk size.
• Manually adjust partition size: Extend unallocated space to any partition on the destination disk you want. It requires you to manually adjust the size of the partition.

How to boot Windows from the cloned SSD

✤First, shut your computer down, and replace the old hard drive with the cloned SSD. Then, start your computer and press the required key (F2, F8, Del, etc.) to enter BIOS, make sure the cloned SSD is selected as the first boot drive, and press F10 to save the settings and continue booting.

✤If your computer can log into Windows normally, then the HDD to SSD migration is successful. You can then enjoy the improved performance.

✤If your computer has an extra slot, you can also attach the old hard drive for storage. AOMEI Backupper contains a Disk Wipe tool, which you can use to clean the hard drive completely and get more capacity.

Bonus: the benefits to migrate HDD to SSD

People may migrate hard drive to new SSD for different reasons, but essentially they can be summarized as:

◆Improved performance: SSDs offer faster read/write speeds, enhanced security, and better compatibility compared to HDDs, making them a popular upgrade—especially for gaming.
◆SSD for OS, HDD for storage: If you’re low on disk space and experiencing lag, moving Windows to another SSD can speed things up, while keeping the old HDD for storage.
◆Affordable SSDs: SSDs used to be costly, but now options like the Samsung 970 EVO and Samsung M.2 are within reach, making it easier for people to upgrade from HDD to SSD.

Faqs about hard drive migration

I‘ve illustrated the secure steps to migrate hard drive to SSD above. But in practice, you may have more issues to consider and more problems to solve. So here are the answers to some common questions for hard drive migration.

Q: Can I migrate HDD to SSD without cloning?

A: Yes, you can also take the backup and restore way. Windows provides a Backup and Restore utility to help you do so, but it's laborious and error-prone. So I would recommend using the System Backup and Restore feature of AOMEI Backupper. You can find detailed steps in this guide: image Windows 10 to SSD.

✎There's one scenario in which you should choose backup & restore way over disk cloning, that is when you want to migrate the system to another computer with different hardware. With the Universal Restore feature of AOMEI Backupper, you can resolve the compatibility issue between computers and make the target SSD boot securely.

Q: What is partition style (MBR/GPT) and how will it affect my migration?

A: GPT (GUID Partition Table) and MBR (Master Boot Record) are 2 different ways to store partitioning info, with GPT being the newer standard. So the latest OS (Windows 11) and devices (such as NVMe SSDs) usually work with GPT.

You need to pay attention to the partition style issue when migrating a hard drive to SSD. If you don't know whether your source hard drive is MBR or GPT, you can try these steps:

Press Win + R to open the Run window -> type "diskmgmt.msc" and hit OK to open disk management -> right-click the disk you want to check and click "Properties" -> then, select "Volume" tab to check the "Partition style".

You can also check the partition style of the target SSD in the same way, but if it hasn't been partitioned, you may make your own choice accordingly.

✎As mentioned above, AOMEI Backupper Standard supports cloning system disk from MBR to MBR, if your source or target drive is partitioned with GPT, you need to upgrade to Pro edition to continue cloning. Also, if the partition style of your cloned SSD is different from the source drive, you need to enter BIOS and make the boot mode compatible (MBR/Legacy BIOS and GPT/UEFI).

Q: Is sector-by-sector clone a better option for hard drive migration?

A: Not exactly. The default intelligent clone will help you exclude unused sectors and logically bad sectors, which is a good way to save space and fix existing errors. So if your target SSD is smaller than the source drive, or the source drive is already problematic, you should keep using the default cloning mode.

Only when your target SSD is larger or at least equally sized to the old hard drive, you can choose a sector-by-sector clone as you need. For example, if there's a system-reserved recovery partition and you want to keep it available on the cloned or restored SSD, then you need to tick "Sector By Sector Clone" to ensure its integrity.

Conclusion

Whether you want to migrate hard drive to SSD for better performance or larger capacity, AOMEI Backupper will help you to complete it with ease and ensure cloning disk to SSD with secure boot.

After migration, you can keep using AOMEI Bakcupper for daily data protection, for example, backup system images or important files automatically in case of accidental system failures and data loss.