Free Way to Clone HDD to SSD in Windows 7 Laptop

Why clone HDD to SSD in Windows 7 laptop?

As can be seen from the above figure, the read and write speed of SSD is faster than that of HDD. And in recent years, as the price of SSDs has fallen, more and more users are willing to replace HDDs with SSDs in pursuit of better performance.

However, when replacing HDD with SSD, what if you don't want to lose the data on the HDD? At this time, you need a reliable cloning tool to migrate the Windows 7 operating system and other files to the new SSD. This will not only prevent you from losing data, but all programs or files can be used normally after booting.

Clone HDD to SSD in Windows 7 for free

Unfortunately, Windows 7 has no tool to clone hard drives, but we can seek help from a third-party tool. AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is very professional utility to clone HDD to SSD. In addition to migrating all data (including OS) on HDD to SSD safely, it also has the following highlights:

◐ It can help you to align SSD after cloning, which can improve your SSD performance. 
◐ It provides Clone Disk Quickly and Sector-by-Sector Clone two clone methods. The former supports cloning a larger HDD to a smaller SSD, and the latter is cloning the entire disk.
◐ It has high compatibility for Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista/XP.
◐ If you are using Windows Server, there is a Server Edition for you.

Next, I will show you the detailed steps to clone HDD to SSD in Windows 7 with AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.

How to clone HDD to SSD in Windows 7 laptop?

Before cloning:

✎ Since laptops often have only one hard drive slot, you may need a SATA to USB cable to connect the SSD to the laptop.
✎ Ensure the SSD is initialized. And it is supposed to have enough unallocated space to store the system.
✎ If you need to clone system disk from MBR to MBR, MBR to GPT, GPT to GPT, GPT to MBR, please upgrade to the Professional edition.

Step 1. Open the installed AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, 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.

Then wait for the process to get finished. In addition, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional also supports merely transferring Windows 7 system partition to SSD. In the main interface, and click “Migrate OS” under "Clone". Then you can complete the system migration according to the instructions.

Boot Windows 7 laptop from the cloned SSD

☛ If your laptop has only one hard drive slot, you can follow the instructions below:

1. First, power off your laptop.

2. Use a screwdriver to unscrew the hard drive positions and remove the hard disk back cover panel.

3. Take off the original disk carefully. Then, install the cloned SSD to your laptop.

4. Cover the hard disk back cover panel.

5. After that, you can reboot your computer from the destination disk directly.

☛ If your laptop can install multiple hard drives, after installing the SSD, you also need to set the SSD as a startup disk to allow Windows 7 to run from the SSD. In addition, you may need to wipe HDD to use it as a data disk.

1. Turn on your laptop, and tap the BIOS key and wait for the BIOS launched.

2. Choose “Boot” tab, and select “Change boot order”. Then set the cloned SSD to the first order in the listed devices.

✍ Tip: The BIOS key is set by the laptop manufacturer. If you don’t know it, you can refer to the instruction book, or google it.

Conclusion

From what has been discussed above, this is how to clone HDD to SSD in Windows 7 laptop. Do you think cloning hard drives is easy with the help of AOMEI Partition Assistant? If you haven't used it yet, please download this free software and try it!