How to Clone Windows 11 to Another Hard Drive (Bootable)

Can I clone my hard drive to an external drive?

If you have encountered this problem, you may wonder how to clone Windows 11 to an SSD or HDD. Don't worry, this article will help you figure it out.

The best disk cloning software for Windows 11

Some users want to find reliable cloning software to help them clone disks on Windows 11. However, there is no software available for disk cloning on the computer's own system, so you have to ask for help from third-party software.

There is no doubt that it is very important to find secure cloning software that will not only help you migrate your data or operating system but also ensure data integrity and safe boot from the new disk.

Here I highly recommend one best disk cloning software in Windows 11 for you—AOMEI Backupper, which can help you easily clone Windows 11 and make it bootable. Learn more about the clone features of this software below:

AOMEI Backupper

Best Windows 11 Clone Software

• Various Clone: The software offers three paths for you to perform disk clone, partition clone, and system clone according to your different needs.

• Clone Anything: You can clone HDDs, SATA SSDs, NVMe M.2 SSDs, USB flash drives, SD cards, etc.

• Intelligent Clone: In default mode, it only clones used sectors, so you can easily clone a larger drive to a smaller drive and boot successfully from the cloned one.

• Sector by sector clone: It can clone all sectors, whether they are used or not.

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

100% Secure

Next I will show you how to migrate Window 11 system by disk clone—(it allows you to move OS to new drive by cloning entire disk) andsystem clone—(it lets you transfer only OS to new drive). You can choose according to your needs. Moving on to catch the stepwise guide on how to migrate your Windows system to another hard drive.

How to clone Windows 11 to another hard drive via the best disk cloning software

Preparations before the Windows 11 clone

Before performing a Windows 11 clone, you need to do some preparatory work.

You Need to:

 Select the target disk: Select the target disk according to your purpose and needs, it can be HDD or SSD, and make sure your target disk can be detected.

 Check the size of the disk: The capacity of the new disk should be greater than or equal to the used space on the old disk so that the new disk can hold all the data on the old disk. Otherwise, the cloning process may eventually fail.

 Prepare the connector: For desktops, you can install the new HDD or SSD directly in the extra socket. For laptops, you need a SATA-USB adapter, which may vary by disk interface (SATA, NVMe, PCIe, etc.).

Back up important files: As the target disk will be completely overwritten during the cloning process.

Copy Windows 11 to new hard drive using Disk Clone

Step 1. Connect the target hard drive to your computer and make sure it is detectable. Open AOMEI Backupper Professional and click “Clone”＞“Disk Clone”.

Step 2. Select the Windows 11 system disk that you want to clone and click “Next”.

Step 3. Select the destination disk to store the cloned data and click “Next”.

Step 4. Preview all the settings and the information of your source and destination disk. Then click “Start Clone”.

Advanced settings:
Edit Partitions: Using this function, you can change the partition size on the destination disk.
Sector by Sector Clone: It will clone all sectors, whether it contains any data or not. Furthermore, this feature is generally available when cloning disks of the same or larger size. If you clone from a large disk to a small one, checking this option will cause clone failure instead.
SSD Alignment: It will accelerate the reading and writing speed of the SSD disk. It is highly recommended to check this option if you are cloning to an SSD.

Clone only Windows 11 operating system to another hard drive

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Backupper Professional. Click “Clone” in the left-hand menu, and choose “System Clone” to clone only Windows 11 operating system.

Step 2. It will automatically select the system drive and related drives by default. Select the hard drive you wish to clone to as the destination disk and click “Next” to continue.

Step 3. Confirm all the settings and then click “Start Clone”. If your target disk is an SSD, you can select “SSD Alignment” to accelerate the reading and writing speed of the SSD disk.

Step 4. When the process is complete, click “Finish”.

Boot from the cloned drive on Windows 11

Now you need to follow the steps below to make the newly cloned drive bootable.

1. Reboot your computer and press F2/F10/Del to enter the BIOS.
2. Go to the boot menu and in the boot priority section, set the new hard drive as the first boot option in BIOS.
3. Press F10 to save all the changes and restart the computer.

Reasons for cloning Windows 11 to another hard drive

After going through all the above guides, if you are not sure whether you need to clone your disk and system, here are some common reasons for copying Windows 11 to a new hard drive:

⊙When your computer or laptop runs slowly and takes a long time to boot up.
⊙When you desire to improve boot speed and overall system performance.
⊙When your system drive is almost full. When you do not have enough space for Windows 11 updates, or your system is almost full after Windows 11 updates.
⊙When you don't want to reinstall any programs on Windows 11. Migrating your operating system to another location without reinstalling can save time and effort.

Final words

That’s all for how to clone Windows 11 to another hard drive. With AOMEI Backupper Professional, you can easily perform Windows 11 clone, ensure that you can successfully boot your computer from the cloned hard drive, and never worry about data loss and system crash.

In addition, you can get into the habit of creating a full backup of your system and files on a regular basis with AOMEI Backupper, so that you can easily restore your computer to previous date using the backup created in advance if you encounter 0xc000000e in Windows 11. There are more features worth exploring, so download this free trial version now and give it a try!