If I Replace My SSD Will I Lose Everything on Windows PC?

What happens if I replace my SSD?

In fact, you won’t lose everything in the process of replacing the SSD, but the precondition is that you execute the right operation. So in this article, we will introduce two practical ways to replace SSD to another drive.

Why need to replace the SSD?

SSD has been widely praised by many PC users for its advantages such as faster running speeds and better durability than HHD. But sometimes, users want to replace SSD to another drive for several reasons:

▶ The SSD is damaged: When the SSD is damaged, it cannot be used normally. It will not only cause accidental loss of important data, but may even cause the system to crash. At this time, you need to replace it with a new hard drive.
▶ The SSD space is insufficient: When the C: drive is full, or even there is not enough space on the entire SSD, the computer will run much slower than before, then you may consider migrating the SSD to a larger one.

How to replace the SSD on Windows PC without losing data

If I replace my SSD will I lose everything? The answer is "of course not". In this post, We'll explain two safe and efficient ways to change SSD without losing data for you, including Windows backup application and a professional drive migration tool.

│Method 1. Via backup application

There is a backup function in Windows system that can backup and restore the system, you can use it to replace SSD on Windows PC. Don't worry about what happens if I remove my SSD, because it’s safe. Let's see the detailed steps to operate it.

✦ Before you do: You need to prepare an empty USB larger than the used space of the current SSD to store all the data of this SSD.

Step 1. Type "Control Panel" in the "Start" menu and press "Enter". Click "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" under "System and Security", then click "Create a system image" in the ejected window.

Step 2. You will be asked "Where do you want to save the backup", select the USB drive you have prepared and click "Next".

Step 3. After the backup is complete, you will be asked if you want to create a system repair disk, please follow the prompts.

After completing the system repair disk creation, please complete the SSD disk installation as required and follow the steps below to replace the original SSD to the new disk:

✍ Restart your PC and boot from the USB drive and click "Next" and "Repair Your Computer" in turn.
✍ Once you get to the blue screen, click "System Image" under "Troubleshoot" to start the System Image Recovery Wizard. Tick "Use the latest available system image" and click "Next".
✍ Choose format and partition the new hard drive, then click "Next", "Finish" and "Yes" in sequence to begin restoring the system image to the new hard drive.

│Method 2. Via a third-party data transfer expert

By reading above, you may realize that it is very difficult to replace an SSD via the backup function. In addition, once the operation is improper, you may accidentally lose important data. To safely replace your SSD, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, a better drive clone expert.

It can completely eliminate your worries about "If I replace my SSD will I lose everything". For it provides two methods in "Clone Disk Wizard" function to clone disk to HDD/SSD without losing data:

♣ Clone Disk Quickly, which copies the used space of the SSD to another drive.
♣ Sector-by-Sector Clone, which will copy every sector of the SSD to the new drive, whether it is used or not.

Besides, if you just want to move Windows OS to SSD, you can use the "Migrate OS to SSD" function to do it. Please download the Demo to see how to upgrade SSD without losing data.

● Preparation work

Before you clone the SSD to the new drive, you must do the following preparation, or the clone task will be failed. 

✐ If you have a laptop, you must prepare a SATA to USB cable to connect the SSD to it; if your PC is a desktop, you can install the new hard drive directly.

✐ In order to identify the new disk, don't forget to initialize it first, making the partition style of the new hard drive be the same as the old hard drive.
✐ The capability of the new drive must be larger than the used space of the SSD.

● How to clone the whole SSD to another drive

If you have already finished the preparation work, please follow the steps to replace SSD to a new hard drive:

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 the SSD if the target disk is an SSD drive. 

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

Note: After successfully replacing SSD to another hard drive, you need to change boot drive to boot Windows from the new disk.

Verdict

In conclusion, when meeting the problem that if I replace my SSD will I lose everything, this tutorial can solve your doubt. Here are two ways to clone an SSD to a new disk, you can choose one according to your needs. 

By comparison, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is a better choice, it can not only transfer data between two hard drives without data loss, but also repair corrupted SSD, align partitions, convert dynamic disk to basic, defrag disk or partition, etc. By the way, if you use the Windows Server system, the Server Version is designed for you.