You can free download HDD cloning software for Windows PC to clone a hard disk drive to SSD or HDD of different sizes safely.
"I am going to replace the pre-installed 1TB HDD with a new 500GB SSD for faster running speed. I wanna clone the entire HDD with OS to the SSD drive as I don’t want to make a fresh install of Windows. What is the most reliable HDD cloning software for Windows 10? Thanks?"
It’s common to clone HDD to SSD because of SSD’s merits like faster reading/writing speed, noiselessness, etc. And it’s not rare to copy HDD to a larger HDD for more disk space, especially when issues like Low Disk Space warning appears. Of course, you may want to clone HDD to another drive to duplicate the HDD in use for backup.
Since Windows system has no built-in disk copy tool to clone the HDD to another drive, it’s necessary to ask for the help of third-party hard disk drive cloning software for Windows PC. Here are some references to select a reliable and powerful one among many HDD copy tools.
① Bootable clone: In many cases, the HDD you plan to clone holds Windows system and you want to boot OS from the target drive after cloning. Thus, a good disk copy tool should support duplicating system HDD to another drive with secure boot. ② Support cloning to hard drive of different sizes: You may upgrade a large HDD to a smaller SSD or replace the current HDD with a larger one. Therefore, the selected HDD copy software should be able to copy an HDD to another disk of different sizes. ③ Easy-to-use: An HDD clone tool aims to save time and energy for reinstalling. Why not reinstall your OS and programs if it is very complicated to handle?
Based on those standards, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard (PA Standard) is my choice, a copy tool for Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7. When it clones system HDD, the hidden boot-related partition will be cloned as well, ensuring the target drive is bootable. It can skip unused sectors while cloning, and enables you to clone a large HDD to a smaller drive if the size of the used space on the source HDD is not larger than the capacity of the target disk. It has a user-friendly graphic interface and offers onscreen instruction.
Now, free download the HDD cloning software and take a closer look at how it copies HDD to another hard drive.
Note: The Standard Edition only supports MBR data disks clone, if you wish to clone MBR system disk, MBR to GPT, GPT to MBR, GPT to GPT, please upgrade to the Professional Edition.
After hard disk drive cloning software free download, it’s time to follow those steps to complete HDD to SSD or HDD copy (Take copying large HDD to smaller SSD as an example).
✍ Preparations before cloning: ▪ Connect the new SSD or HDD to the Windows-based PC and ensure that it can be detected by the OS. ▪ To copy HDD faster, you can uninstall unnecessary applications and delete extra files at first (omissible). ▪ Enter Disk Management and initialize the new hard drive. ▪ Back up them if there is necessary data on your destination disk as this operation will erase all data on the target one. (all data will be intact on the source disk after cloning)
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.
Find out proper HDD cloning software and you can achieve HDD to SSD or larger HDD replacement without Windows & apps reinstallation effortlessly. In fact, apart from cloning the entire disk, AOMEI Partition Assistant is a practical program that allows you to migrate OS related partitions only to SSD or HDD, extend system partition without losing data, move installed apps/games, test disk speed to monitor your devices, and if you need to convert boot disk from MBR to GPT, this handy software can also help you.