How to Perform Disk Copying Without Reboot on Windows

Scenario: Can I clone disk without rebooting?

"I think disk cloning is the best way to back up my primary disk to an external hard drive. If my primary disk fails, I'd like to have an easy-to-boot disk, so I figured a clone would be the best solution.

When I started cloning using some cloning software on the market, I was very surprised to see that the cloning process involved restarting the computer 3 times! Is this absolutely necessary? If I wanted to use this as my regular backup method, it would be very impractical to have to reboot every time I wanted to clone the disk.

I would like to know if there is a way to achieve disk copying without reboot? Thanks for your feedback.”

Why do we want disk copying without reboot?

Users usually want to clone a disk without rebooting for the following reasons:

✎ Users can clone disk while running Windows without interruption.
✎ When a computer fails and an emergency backup is required, Windows may not restart normally.
✎ Simplify the cloning process and make cloning more convenient.
✎ Avoid PC rebooting into Windows PE mode or PreOS mode after cloning is complete.

How to run disk copying without reboot

So, is it possible to achieve disk copying without reboot? The answer depends on what cloning software you use. Most cloning software on the market uses Cold Clone, which means that a reboot is required to complete the disk cloning. To a clone disk without rebooting, you need to find a tool that uses Hot Clone Tech.

For this, I highly recommend AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional for you. It is an all-in-one partition wizard and is compatible with Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7. Its built-in feature “Disk Clone” embeds “Hot Clone” technique, allows users to clone disk or partition while you keep working. In other words, you don't have to reboot your computer to run the cloning process. Please download the utility to see how it works.

▶ Step 1. Preparation work

● 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.

● If the target disk has not been used, please initialize it first.

● 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.

▶ Step 2. Clone disk step by step

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 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 improve the reading and writing speed of SSD if the target disk is an SSD drive.

Step 5. At last, click "Apply" and "Proceed" in the main interface to start cloning the hard drive.

During the cloning process, you can continue to use Windows. When the cloning is over, the computer will not restart.

▶ Step 3. Boot from it without issues

If you clone only data, you can use it directly after the hard drive is installed. If you cloned the system drive, to boot Windows from the cloned hard drive, you need to restart the computer, enter the BIOS and change boot order.

Summary

Can you disk copying without reboot? Yes, with the help of AOMEI Partition Assistant, you can clone your disk or OS when you're using the PC. But don't just use it as a clone software, there are more powerful features you can try such as migrate OS, convert MBR to GPT, etc.

For Windows Server users, please turn to Server Edition which is designed for Windows Server 2022, 2016, 2012(R2), 2008(R2), 2003 users.