How to Clone GPT System Disk to SSD and Boot from it Successfully

What is GPT disk?

MBR and GPT  are two different partition styles, MBR is booted by BIOS, while GPT is booted by UEFI. They are used to store various data on the hard disk, including the Windows operating system. When a new disk is initialized, one of the partition styles must be selected. The initialized disk is called MBR disk or GPT disk.

According to the current mainstream trend, using GPT disk is a better choice than MBR. Because GPT disk have advantages in partition size, number of partitions. As a new partition style, GPT has gradually replaced MBR.

Know about the conception of SSD

SSD is short for Solid State Drive. Compared to HDDs, SSDs have very clear advantages in speed, noise, form factor, ruggedness or fragmentation. So when the disk is GPT HDD, users may want to clone GPT system disk to SSD for better performance.

How to clone GPT system disk to SSD step by step

Windows doesn't have a built-in cloning tool, so we need to turn to third-party software. I recommend AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional  for you, which is a powerful cloning that can help users clone GPT to MBR/GPT disk without data loss. It provides two cloning methods: Clone Disk Quickly and Sector-by Sector clone. The former allows you to clone GPT disk to smaller SSD, and the latter allows you to clone the entire original disk.

In addition, if you just want to transfer the Windows OS to the SSD, the "Migrate OS to SSD" feature can help you migrate the system and system-related data to the SSD, and keep other data on the source disk.

Please download the Demo version to try how to clone GPT system disk to SSD with AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, but the final result can only be previewed.

Preparations before cloning:
1. Please make sure your SSD has been initialized, otherwise the SSD will not be recognized by the computer.
2. If your PC has only one hard drive slot, then you may need to connect the SSD to the PC via a SATA to USB cable; if your PC supports multiple hard drives, you can directly install the SSD into the PC.

Step 1. Open the installed AOMEI Partition Assistant, 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 like SSD and click "Next".

Step 3. Select the destination disk to store the data on the source 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 Optimize the performance of SSD if the target disk is an SSD drive. 

Tip: If you want to clone Windows to a smaller drive, the "Clone without resizing partitions"  button will be greyed out. Then, a Note about how to boot OS from the destination disk will pop up. Read and keep it in mind.

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

Once this process is complete, you can restart your computer, enter the UEFI to change the boot order, and use the cloned SSD as the first boot device, so you can  boot the computer from the SSD successfully. If your SSD is MBR partition style, you need to change BIOS to UEFI before the SSD be booted.  

Conclusion 

With just a few easy steps, you can clone GPT system disk to SSD successfully with the help of AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional Edition, this is the magic power of it. If you haven't tried it, please hurry up for a trial!

If you want to use this software on Windows Server, please try the Server edition.

More features I wish you visit its office web: /manual.html.