How to Make a Bit-for-Bit Copy of Hard Drive? [Freeware]

What is bit by bit copy and when need it?

The bit-for-bit copy of a hard drive is a copy where each bit of that copy is identical to the corresponding bit in the original disk. It is also called a sector-by-sector clone. This copy method will clone all sectors no matter they are used or not, even if the sector is blank or has a logically bad sector. So, the destination hard drive is exactly the same as the source hard disk and keeps identical properties such as drive status, drive size, drive letter, the number of volumes, etc. 

This bit-for-bit hard drive copy method will be quite necessary and useful when you want an exact look of the old disk on a new disk, or you need to clone hard drive with bad sectors. Next, we will show how to copy a hard drive bit-for-bit.

Freeware for bit-for-bit disk clone in Windows PC

Here, we would like to share a free hard drive cloning tool named AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. It is a free yet powerful partition manager for all editions of Windows 11/10, 8, 7 and Windows XP/Vista users. Its "Disk Clone Wizard" and "Partition Clone Wizard"come with the "Sector by Sector Clone" method, permitting you to clone a hard drive or partition bit by bit. Besides, there are also “Clone Disk Quickly” and “Clone Partition Quickly”, allowing you to clone used sectors to the destination location, or clone larger drive to smaller drive.

No matter if you want to bit-by-bit copy of hard drive, SSD, USB flash drive or SD card in Windows 11/10/8/7, this freeware can satisfy you well. You can click the below button to free download this bit-by-bit copy software and have a try.

4 Steps to make a bit-for-bit copy of a hard drive

After you download and install AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard on your computer PC, you can take the following steps to copy the hard drive bit-for-bit.

Preparations you need to make:
1. Connect the destination disk to your computer and make sure it is detected. Back up the disk and delete all partitions on it to make unallocated space for clone.
2. Make sure the destination hard drive is large enough to hold all sectors on the source drive since it will clone every used and unused bit.

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.

Then all bits will be cloned to the destination hard drive. For cloning system hard drive bit by bit, the Standard version only supports MBR disk to MBR disk clone. If you plan to copy MBR-based system disk to GPT, GPT to MBR, or GPT to GPT, please upgrade to Professional edition.

Summary

So, with the help of AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, you can effortlessly make a bit-for-bit copy of a hard drive in Windows 11,10, 8, 7. Additionally, it has many other wonderful features: move/merge/clone/check partition, convert MBR and GPT without deleting partitions, transfer OS between MBR and MBR disk, make bootable media and more. If you want to enjoy those functions on Windows Server 2019/2016/2012/2008/20003, you can use the AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.