Why do you need to clone a hard disk?

By cloning/ copying a hard disk, you can make a duplicate of your current hard disk. It’s a nice choice to duplicate your hard drive under the two following conditions:

• Upgrade your current hard drive to SSD or larger disk without apps and OS reinstallation: If you want to replace your old hard disk with SSD or a larger disk while keeping all apps & current OS, you can copy the current system disk to another SSD or larger disk to transfer all data, including OS and your program data.

• Back up your system and data for safety: Through disk copy, you can get an exact backup of what is stored on your hard disk in use. Thus you can quickly replace the original hard drive with the cloned one if the current disk is failing.

Without knowing anything about the disk clone, I did suffer the tedious and tiresome work before. That happened when I just entered college and had my own PC. In order to avoid data loss due to my improper operation since I was not familiar with using a computer. I decided to back up all the things on the D drive to my USB flash drive. Then, I copied the files and folders one by one. The result turned out literally frustrating – some boot files of apps are lost during the copy-paste process and I can no longer boot those apps.

Why do you need to clone a partition?

Partition Clone can help you quickly back up your important partition or migrate a partition from one hard disk to another hard disk so as to prevent data loss caused by program errors or some other accidental affairs. This function can be useful, either as a means of making a backup or for the distribution of an identical environment to multiple computers.

How to clone disks/partitions in AOMEI Partition Assistant?

As Windows has no built-in disk cloner, this time, a powerful and versatile utility AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is introduced. 

Before you do

There’re some important things you should do before the disk clone begins.

• Connect a new hard disk that’s not smaller than the used space of the current disk to your computer.
• If there’s any data on the new hard disk, back them up first because the destination disk will be overwritten and the original data on the destination will be erased after the disk clone.
• Remove some unwanted files and uninstall unimportant programs from the source disk to shorten copy time.
• Download and install AOMEI Partition Assistant.

This tool to clone a current system drive is very useful to upgrade your current system drive. If you would like to use this feature, please upgrade to a paid version of AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, Server, or above versions.

AOMEI Partition Assistant Disk Clone Wizard Brief Tutorial:

1. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, click the "Clone" main tab and then select "Clone Disk".

2. Choose a proper method:

"Clone Disk Quickly" only copies the used space of the disk so you can clone to a smaller disk.

"Sector-by-Sector Clone" will copy all sectors of the disk no matter whether it is used or not, which requires the destination disk space to be equal or larger than the whole original disk space.

Tips: If the "Sector-by-sector clone" is selected, the "Edit Partitions" option is unavailable. For encrypted disk, Partition Assistant will use the "Sector-by-sector"mode by default.

3. In the disk map, choose the source disk which needs to be copied.

4. Choose the destination disk.

Notes:

• The destination disk should be equal or larger than the source disk.
• All the data on the destination disk will be covered by the files on the source disk, so make sure there is no important data on it.

5. Check the copy disk options:

• Copy without resizing partitions: The source disk configuration will be copied on the new disk with same partitions size

• Fit partitions to the entire disk: The partitions on the source disk will occupy the entire destination disk

• Edit partition on this disk: You could change the size of the  on the new disk

6. If you copy the disk containing the system partition, you will receive the following message which guides you on how to boot OS from the destination disk:

7. You can preview the disk cloning operating by viewing the "Pending Operations". To commit the "Pending Operations", please click "Apply" and "Proceed".

AOMEI Partition Assistant Partition Clone Wizard Brief Tutorial:

1. Select "Clone Partition" after you click the "Clone" main tab just like the first step in Disk Clone.

2. In the pop-up window, there are two different ways to copy your partition:

3. Select the source partition. Here we choose D: partition to copy:

4. Select the destination space. (The destination should be unallocated space that is equal to or larger than the source partition.)

5. In the main window, you could define the new partition size and info. After all is set, please click "Finish" to continue.

Tips: In this interface, you can choose to create a primary partition or logical partition in the drop-down menu; change the default drive letter as you wish; adjust the partition size by dragging.

6. You can preview the partition cloning operating by viewing the "Pending Operations". To commit the "Pending Operations", please click "Apply" and "Proceed".

Conclusion

Following above steps, you can easily do a disk clone or partition clone from one hard disk to another one.

This disk clone feature is mainly used to clone a current system drive to a larger HDD or SSD so that you can replace the system drive with a larger HDD/SSD. In this way, you will get better computer performances.

The partition clone feature is mainly used to clone a partition from one hard drive to another drive to make a backup of your partition and data on it for future date recovery.

This product also has many other useful features for disk management including app mover and schedule defrag. If you want to apply this software on Server PCs for disk management, you can try the Server or higher edition.

Notes:

• If the disk you want to clone a disk contains OS, you will be prompted to enter into the Restart Mode.
• To make a bootable clone, it is not recommended to use the clone partition wizard to simply clone the C: partition to another drive.

FAQs:

Q: What is difference between partition clone and disk clone?

A: Partition clone focuses on copying individual partitions on a drive, while disk clone involves replicating the entire disk, including all partitions and data.

Q: Can I connect the destination drive via a USB connector during disk clone?

A: Yes, you can connect the destination drive via a USB connector during disk clone. But after successful disk clone process, please connect the cloned drive internally to boot from it.

Q: Can I use the feature "Clone Partition" to clone my current system partition?

A: Yes, you can clone the current system partition with the feature but we do not guarantee it works to boot after partition cloning. To make a bootable clone of your system, it is recommended to use the feature "Migrate OS to SSD" or "Clone Disk".