Solved - Can Clone A Hard Drive While It Is in Use?

Nowadays, more and more people are wondering can clone a hard drive while it is in use by another application. This is because if the computer restarts while cloning the hard drive, it will interrupt your work, making it less productive and taking a long time.

This article will provide a detailed answer to "Can You Use Computer While Clone Hard Drive" or "Can clone a hard drive while it is in use". In addition, we will also recommend one of the best hard disk cloning software in Windows 11/10.

Can clone a hard drive while it is in use?

Using your computer while cloning a hard disk is possible, but too much activity slows down the process and increases the risk of errors. To save time, use a reliable disk cloning tool and perform only low-impact activities while cloning the hard disk. Whether a user can successfully clone an HDD while it is running on Windows depends on the cloning software.

Usually, most cloning software on the market uses Cold Clone Tech, which means that the computer will reboot when the data is cloned. In this way, the user cannot use it while the hard drive is performing a cloning operation. If you want to clone a hard drive while it is in use, you need to choose to clone software with hot clone, such as AOMEI Partition Assistant.

As a reliable and powerful disk cloning tool. It helps you to clone your hard disk quickly while keeping your existing data intact. And you can even use this powerful software to clone boot drive. Continue reading and let's see how to clone a hard drive while Windows is running.

How can clone a hard drive while it is in use in Windows 10?

Some users may want to ask can I use my computer while creating a system image? Yes, you can create a system image while Windows is running. But creating a system image is too complicated.

To clone a hard drive when it is running easily, I highly recommend you to use AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. This is a market-leading all-in-one disk partition management software that has been loved by users since its launch.

• Its built-in Disk Clone feature provides Hot Clone Tech, it allows users can clone a hard drive while it is in use.
• You don’t need to reboot the computer into Windows PE mode or PreOS mode after the clone is completed, making the cloning process more convenient.
• "Migrate OS to SSD" is also a good method to clone the OS to another drive, it supports migrating all data related to the Windows system to the target drive, and other data is left on the source drive.

Please download this tool to see how can clone a hard drive while it is in use or clone laptop hard drive to new SSD.

▶ Part 1. What you should do before cloning a hard drive?

✦ If the target disk has not been used, please initialize it first. Rely on AOMEI Partition Assistant, it can automatically recognize the new SSD/HDD and initialize it.

✦ Install the new SSD to your desktop or laptop. If your electronic device has only one disk slot, you may need a SATA to USB adapter to connect it.

✦ As we all know, the partition style must be compatible with the boot mode (UEFI and Legacy BIOS). In order to avoid changing the boot mode after cloning, you’d better make the partition style of the hard drive as the same as the partition style of the source drive. So, please convert the hard drive to MBR or GPT if necessary. AOMEI Partition Assistant can simplify the process for MBR to GPT converter. And this full-featured tool provides a one-stop service during the process to clone hard drive to SSD.

▶ Part 2. Start clone a hard drive in detail

AOMEI Partition Assistant can save you a lot of time as a high-quality disk cloning tool with fast cloning speed. The tool also offers some additional advanced features such as optimizing the SSD while cloning to ensure its performance.

Step 1. Download and install AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro. Then, click "Clone" in the main interface, and select "Clone Disk".

Step 2. Choose the hard disk that you need to clone as the source disk and click "Next".

Step 3. Select another drive as the destination disk, and then click "Next".

Step 4. Then, you can check the source and destination disk in the next window or change to "Sector to Sector clone", and click the "Confirm" button to continue if there is no problem.

Here, you can also click the "Settings" button to adjust the partition size on the destination disk or tick "4k alignment" to improve the reading and writing speed of the SSD. 

Step 5. After returning to the main interface, check the pending operation and click "Apply" and "Proceed" to commit the operation.

You can clone a hard drive while it is in use. And after the clone is completed, Windows will not reboot.

▶ Part 3. Boot from cloned hard drive without issues

If you clone only data, you can use it directly after the hard drive is installed. If you cloned the system drive, please enter the BIOS and boot computer from the new drive.

Final words

As you can see from the above, this is the full guide on how can clone a hard drive while it is in use. With the help of the AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro, you can do it easily and safely.

Last but not the least, if you want to clone disk while Windows Server running, you should switch to AOMEI Partition Assistant Server which can help you solve the various disk problems timely and flexibly.