AOMEI Partition Assistant
How to Clone Laptop Hard Drive in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 Safely?
Learn how to clone laptop hard drive to new hard drive easily and simply. AOMEI Partition Assistant allows you to copy laptop hard drive in Windows 11/10/8/7.
By Lucas / Updated on November 4, 2024
Scenario: Need to clone laptop hard drive to SSD
I have changed hard drives on a desktop several times because it is easy to simply hook up the new drive, use image software to clone to it, and then swap cables. Thus, now, I am interested in swapping out my notebook hard drive. Is there any simple way that I can use to change my laptop hard drive?”
- Question from tom's guide.com
As the users said, clone a laptop hard drive to another HDD or SSD using disk cloning software, and then, replace the hard drive with the cloned hard drive is a good way. But how to clone laptop hard drive and boot from the cloned hard drive successfully in Windows?
Why is necessary to clone laptop hard drive?
▶ Upgrade hard drive to larger disk or faster SSD
SSD provides faster write/read speed giving you a better experience. On the other hand, if your disk is in low disk space, replacing it with a larger disk is a good way to get more space. So upgrading laptop disk to SSD or larger disk will help you swap out your laptop hard drive without reinstalling the system and software.
▶ Clone hard drives for backing up data
Nowadays, laptop hard drive face more danger than before, like system crash, hard drive broken, virus attack, many other factors can lead to hard disk data loss. Thus it is a wise idea to clone important data on a laptop hard drive to an external disk as a backup.
Of course, many reasons may lead you to think about cloning a laptop hard drive, but the question is how to clone a laptop hard drive easily and safely.
The best laptop hard drive cloning software on Windows 11/10/8/7
To clone a hard drive, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is one of the best options for you. It is capable of cloning all data on a disk to another hard drive, solid-state drive, USB drive, SD card, and other storage devices with a few steps.
And it is a flexible tool with good performance on the following aspects:
◤ Clone larger disk to smaller disk: Usually, each GB costs more than that of HDD. So you might need to clone a larger hard drive to a smaller SSD, this tool can definitely perform well on this.
◤ Make the clone disk bootable: Once you complete the cloning process with this tool, you can directly place it on the disk bay, or enter BIOS to set it as the boot device, and your PC will boot from the cloned disk successfully.
◤ SSD partition alignment: This is specially designed for a solid-state drive. It makes the system access data from the very beginning of the solid-state. And it can furtherly improve the SSD performance.
◤ Manage disk partition: AOMEI Partition Assistant is more than a cloning software, but a disk management tool. It helps you to partition the hard drive after installing a new disk.
Now you can download the demo version and follow the steps to have a try.
How to clone laptop hard drive in Windows 11,10, 8, 7?
AOMEI Partition Assistant provides Windows users a concise interface that you can operate only by mouse clicking. But first, you need to think about where you should store the content of the original hard drive. You should have a destination drive that at least has enough size to store the content on the source disk.
1. If you want to clone the disk which contains the system partition, you should install the new drive to your computer first, then, connect the old hard drive to the laptop via a USB port. Otherwise, you cannot boot from the new drive after clone.
2. If you are trying to clone a laptop hard drive to an external hard drive for saving data, you can install AOMEI Partition Assistant to your laptop, connect the external hard drive to the laptop via USB cable.
After confirming the demands, you can start cloning with AOMEI Partition Assistant.
Step 1. Click "Clone" and choose "Clone Disk" at the top pane.
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.
How to boot from cloned hard drive in laptop
After cloning a laptop hard disk to a new one, here’s how to switch to the new disk and boot from it.
Sstep 1. Power off the laptop completely and disconnect it from any power source. Open the laptop’s back cover (refer to the user manual if needed).
Carefully remove the old disk and insert the new disk that has been cloned. Secure the new disk in place and close the laptop cover.
Step 2. Power on the laptop and press the key to enter BIOS/UEFI settings (usually F2, F12, Esc, or Del, depending on the laptop model).
In the BIOS/UEFI menu, look for the Boot Order or Boot Priority settings.
Step 3. Make sure the new disk is set as the primary boot device. Save changes and exit the BIOS/UEFI. The laptop should restart automatically.
Conclusion
This is how to clone laptop hard drive to SSD or HDD in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7. Using AOMEI Partition Assistant to clone laptop hard drive is very easy and safe. It also supports you to clone GPT disk to MBR disk, or clone MBR disk to GPT disk. It is very useful for Windows users. What's more, if you are using a Server system, you can use the Server edition to complete the cloning
