Few Clicks to Copy Disk to SSD in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7

I am about to buy a Samsung Evo 850 1TB SSD. And I have a 1TB HDD on my laptop, which has Windows 10 Pro 64bit on the computer, and now I want to clone the disk to new Samsung SSD drive without installing or reinstalling Windows. So anyone knows how can I copy disk to SSD in Windows? Thanks a lot.

- from tomshardware.com

• When copying disk to SSD drive in Windows 11/10/8/7?
• Best software to clone disk to SSD for Windows systems
• Step-by-step guide: clone disk to SSD with secure boot on Windows
• Summary

When copying disk to SSD drive in Windows 11/10/8/7?

In general, there are 4 circumstances that you may need to copy hard disk to SSD drive in Windows 11,10, 8, 7:

1. Make a backup

First of all, cloning hard disk to SSD drive, actually, is also a process of transferring all data from one disk to another, so it is also a great way to back up disk data.

2. Upgrade old hard drive

If you use an old disk for years, there are chances that its firmware will start being outdated or the disk itself will be more prone to damage. Replacing the old disk with a new one can avoid the disk failure and subsequent data loss.

3. Improve computer performance

As we all know, SSD is much faster than HDD in data writing and reading speed. So replacing HDD with SSD can help boost the computer performance to some extent.

4. Expand a small hard drive

If your current hard disk is too small to contain extra new applications or programs, and starts to prompts out low disk space warning, you can clone the old disk to a larger SSD drive.

Best software to clone disk to SSD in Windows PC

Copying disk to SSD drive does not mean copying and pasting, or say dragging and dropping like you do when copying personal several files/folders. That would miss some key files making your Windows or some special programs stop working. Therefore, in order to load OS or applications successfully, you need to use a piece of third-party disk cloning software.

Among all available disk cloning tools for Windows 11/10/8/7 and Windows XP/Vista (32 bit and 64 bit) , AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional has gained much more positive feedbacks thanks to its following cloning features.

▋Support copying disk to smaller SSD since it can only copy used space from one disk to another via the “Clone Disk Quickly” method.

▋Permit to copy GPT disk to MBR SSD, or MBR disk to GPT SSD, or simply MBR to MBR, GPT to GPT.

▋Enable you to align partition on SSD drive during the process of cloning hard disk to SSD.

▋Allow you to copy system/boot disk to SSD drive, and the SSD will be bootable after cloning as long as you set it as the first boot order in BIOS.

Step-by-step guide: clone disk to SSD with secure boot on Windows

Now you can download the demo version and follow the guide to see how to clone disk to SSD in Windows 10, 8, 7.

Step 1. Make preparation

1. Connect the SSD to your computer and make sure it is detected successfully.

>If your computer only has one drive bay, you will need to prepare a SATA-to-USB cable to connect SSD to your computer.

>If your computer has two drive bays, you need to open the computer case, find the extra drive bay (generally located underneath or next to the main HDD bay). Slide the SSD into the drive bay and line up the holes in the top of the drive bay with the holes in the SSD mounting kit. Secure the SSD into the drive bay with the screws. Close the computer case and start the machine.

2. You can remove unnecessary files or programs on the old disk to make it fit for the SSD drive, especially when the target SSD is not much larger than the hard disk.

3. Back up data you need in advance since during the cloning process, all data on the target SSD will be deleted.

Step 2. Start cloning Windows hard disk to SSD

Step 1. Install and launch 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 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 6. You can preview the disk cloning operation by viewing the "Pending Operations". To commit the "Pending Operations", please click "Apply" and "Proceed".

✍Tip: If you just want to transfer OS partition to SSD, you can use the “Migrate OS to SSD” wizard.

Step 3. Boot from the cloned SSD

After you have copied disk to SSD as above, now make your computer boot from the cloned SSD successfully.

1. Reboot your computer.

2. During the initial screen, constantly press setup key (such as F2, DEL…) to access the BIOS environment during the restarting process. If you don’t know the key, you can search online according to your motherboard manufacturer.

3. Once you get inside the Setup screen, look for the Boot tab and set the cloned SSD as the boot drive in BIOS.

4. Save the changes and exit the Setup screen. Now you should boot the computer from the SSD drive.

Note:✎...

You will have to change Legacy BIOS to UEFI, or UEFI to BIOS if the cloned SSD and source disk are of different partition table (MBR and GPT).

Summary

This article has shown you how to copy disk to SSD and boot computer from the cloned SSD in Windows 10/8/7. This method provided by AOMEI Partition Assistant can be used to clone disk to Samsung, SanDisk, or other popular brands of SSD drive.

If you want to clone Server hard drive to SSD or HDD, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant Server, which works well on both Server and Windows operating systems.