Best Way to Clone Windows 7 to New Hard Drive or SSD

Can I Clone Windows 7 to New Hard Drive or SSD?

You can easily clone Windows 7 to new hard drive or SSD as long as you find professional disk cloning software. It's disappointed that Windows 7 or other systems do not provide such software. In this case, you need to use third-party software to make a bootable clone of  Windows 7.

Why Perform System Clone in Windows 7?

There are many reasons you might want to clone system in Windows 7, below are the most common options.

• Transfer OS to new hard drive with high capacity,
• Copy system drive to SSD disk for better performance.
•  Migrate system from old computer to new computer, so you can keep all the default configuration, settings, apps, personal data without reinstalling. 
• Clone system partition for a copy of backup. Then, in the event of a disaster, you can easily and quickly replace hard drive with the cloned disk.

Best Cloning Software to Clone Windows 7 System Partition 

AOMEI Backupper Professional is one of the best cloning software for system or disk in Windows 7 as well as other systems. And it provides you with 2 available ways to clone system partition:

Way 1: Move Windows 7 operating system with System Clone. All the Windows system files, installed programs, settings, will be transferred to the new one (larger hard drive or solide state drive), without reinstallation and data loss, and make it bootable after cloning. 

Way 2: Clone hard drive including the operating system with Disk Clone. Similar to Way 1, but this way will include data and installed programs on the non-system partitions.

And either way, you can clone only used sectors with Intelligent Clone feature, which make its easy to clone larger drive to smaller drive or SSD. Also, you can choose to clone all sectors of system partition or entire disk with Sector by sector clone. 

Please download AOMEI Backupper Professional to have a try! For server users, try AOMEI Backupper Server.  

(Note: The Clone features in the free trial can be demonstrated only, to clone Windows 7 to new hard drive or SSD and boot from it, please upgrade pro trail to enjoy.)

How to Safely Perform System Clone in Windows 7

Now, we will show you two ways to clone Windows 7 system partition. And both of them also apply to do system clone in Windows 8/10/11(both 32 bit and 64 bit). Well then, which one should you use?

>> If you just want to move Windows 7 operating system to new hard drive or SSD, try Way 1.

>> If you are intending to clone disk to larger disk including all the installed programs and personal data on the non-system partition, try Way 2. 

Way 1: Move Windows 7 Operating System to New Hard Drive or SSD

 Step 1. Open AOMEI Backupper Professional, select System Clone under Clone tab.

Step 2. Choose new hard drive or SSD you prepare as the destination. Remember to click Next >> in each step.

Note: The cloning operation will overwrite the data on the new hard drive or SSD. Thus, to avoid unexpected data loss, you need to backup important files on it in advance.

Step 3. (Optional) Tick SSD Alignment to optimize the performance for the SSD if the destination is a SSD disk. If the destination disk is larger, you will see one more option - Make full use of disk space and tick it to edit partition size automatically. And press Start Clone to do Windows 7 system clone easily.

To boot from the cloned hard drive or SSD:

• Shut down your computer completely.

• Replace the original hard drive with the new cloned HDD or SSD. 

• Then restart to boot from the cloned disk. If it does not boot from cloned HDD or SSD, you need to change boot order in BIOS and set it as the first boot device. 

Way 2. Clone Windows 7 Hard Drive to New Hard Drive or SSD

Step 1. Open AOMEI Backupper Professional, select Clone > Disk Clone.

Step 2. Select the hard drive including Windows 7 system as the source disk, click Next >>.

Step 3. Choose the larger HDD or SSD as the destination disk, and then press Next >>.

Then, you will be told that all the data on the destination will be deleted. Click OK to confirm the deletion during the cloning process and you want to clone a hard drive in Windows 7 to another.

Step 4. Tick SSD Alignment to improve performance of SSD disk if you are performing HDD to SSD clone and press Start Clone >> to clone hard drive with Windows 7 safely.

By default, the cloning software will clone only used sectors on the system partition or entire hard drive in Windows 7, which will ignore the bad sectors, unused sectors, etc. Also, if you are sure your disk is healthy, you can choose to clone all sectors of it with Sector by Sector clone. It requires the destination disk is larger than source disk.

If the destination disk is larger, you need to enable Edit Partitions feature and adjust partition size on the destination disk manually or automatically. And if source disk is GPT and destination disk is MBR, you are still able to convert the destination disk from MBR to GPT and enjoy disk space larger than 2TB.

The Epilogue

System clone in Windows 7 is quite easy with the help of best cloning software - AOMEI Backupper Professional. You can choose to only clone Windows 7 system partition or directly clone Windows 7 hard drive to new hard drive. And in both ways, you can further improve the performance of SSD disk and make full use of unallocated space by editing partition size or changing MBR to GPT during the cloning process.

Besides, you could use Partition Clone to move data from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and enjoy other useful features. As we all known, Windows 7 support has ended on January 14, 2020, and you could stay with Windows 7 for one more three years if you get the extended security updates. To continue using this system, you need to protect system and data on it with its backup or sync feature. To manage them on multiple computers, try AOMEI Centralized Backupper.