Best Way to Clone a Hard Drive on Windows 11 | Easy Guide

Benefits of Cloning a Hard Drive

Cloning a hard drive involves creating an exact copy of your drive's contents, including the operating system, applications, and personal files. In general, disk cloning offers several advantages:

✔ Seamless transitions to new hardware: You can upgrade to a larger drive and switch from an HDD to an SSD by performing disk clone.

✔ Minimal downtime: Whenever your original hard drive breaks down, you can replace it with a cloned disk and continue working.

✔ Easy backup: The cloned disk contains all the data on the original disk. It effectively safeguards your data against potential drive failures.

Prepare for Disk Clone on Windows 11

To clone a disk on Windows 11, you should do the following preparations:

1. Choose an appropriate destination disk

• Make sure the destination disk has enough space to hold all data on the source disk.
• If you are replacing HDD with SSD, you may choose an NVMe SSD over SATA SSD. NVMe SSDs offer lightning-fast read and write speeds, as shown in the following picture:

2. Choose reliable disk cloning software

Here I’d like to recommend AOMEI Backupper as the best disk cloning software for Windows 11. It has both free and paid versions. I’ll compare its free version – AOMEI Backupper Standard and paid version - AOMEI Backupper Professional with a table:

Choose a version based on your need. If you are cloning a data disk, the Standard edition can meet your need. If you are cloning a disk where Windows is installed, you can complete the task with the Professional edition.

3. Other tools you need

• An external enclosure or SATA-to-USB adapter. You’ll need it to connect the target disk if you are using a laptop.
• A screwdriver. It can help you open your computer case and the hard drive bay.

How to Clone HDD to SSD in Windows 11

Let’s say you are moving Windows 11 along with personal data to a new SSD. In this case, you should download and install AOMEI Backupper Professional on your PC before cloning.

AOMEI Backupper

Easiest hard drive clone software for Windows PC.

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Now learn how to clone an HDD to an SSD in Windows 11 as follows:

Step 1. Connect the target disk to your computer.

Ensure the destination disk is properly connected to your computer (internally via SATA or externally via USB).

Note: If the destination disk contains any data, backup important files in advance. The destination disk will be overwritten during the cloning process.

Step 2. Navigate to the Disk Clone option.

Open disk cloning software in Windows 11. Choose Clone > Disk Clone.

Step 3. Choose HDD and SSD respectively.

Click on the old HDD on the Source Disk page and click on the new SSD on the Destination Disk page in order.

Step 4. Configure cloning options.

To accelerate the read/write speed of the destination SSD, please check the SSD Alignment option. Also, if you are cloning to a larger drive, click Edit Partitions and choose Add unused space to all partitions or Manually adjust partition size to make full use of disk capacity.

Step 5. Initiate the cloning process.

To begin transferring data from HDD to SSD, click the Start Clone button.

Step 6. Boot Windows 11 from the cloned SSD.

Restart your computer, enter BIOS and set the new SSD as the first boot device.

Cloned Disk Won’t Boot: 3 Quick Fixes

If your computer fails to boot from the cloned disk after you change boot order in BIOS, here are three quick fixes for your reference.

Fix 1: Change Boot Mode to UEFI or Legacy

If you cloned an MBR disk to GPT disk or cloned a GPT disk to MBR disk, it is necessary to change boot mode from Legacy to UEFI or from UEFI to Legacy. The wrong boot mode will cause the HDD/SSD not booting after clone.

1. Continuously press a specific key (usually F2, F8, F12, Del) to enter BIOS Setup.

2. Then, use the arrow keys to select Boot tab. Here, you can set UEFI/BIOS Boot Mode as Legacy or UEFI.

3. Press F10 to save the settings and exit. Then, restart your computer from the cloned disk.

Fix 2: Repair Windows Startup

The Windows Startup Repair will fix some errors and help you boot successfully. Here’s how to do it.

1. Boot from the Windows installation disc. Select Repair your computer.

2. When you get into the "Choose an option" screen, select Troubleshoot -> Advanced Options -> Startup Repair. Then, it will start to repair the startup problem.

Fix 3: Run Bootrec.exe

If Windows Startup Repair doesn’t work, you can use Bootrec.exe to fix the cloned disk won’t boot problem.

1. Boot computer from Windows installation disc. Select Repair your computer -> Troubleshoot -> Advanced Options -> Command Prompt.

2. In the pop-up command prompt, type the following commands:

• bootrec /fixmbr
• bootrec /fixboot
• bootrec /scanos
• bootrec /rebuildbcd

* Please visit cloned SSD not booting for more details.

To Sum Up

This guide covers all the information you need to clone a hard drive on Windows 11, including preparing your tools, executing the clone, and troubleshooting boot failure. Actually, AOMEI Backupper is not only the best disk cloning software for Windows 11 but also specialized Windows backup software. You can use it to backup all kinds of data on your PC. Download it and explore on your own!