To clone Server 2016 to another hard drive effortlessly, you can employ this great cloning software, AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.
Hello, my machine is running Windows Server 2016 and I have bought a great solid-state drive. Now I want to replace the existing OS hard drive with the newly purchased SSD. But I’m afraid of the complicated process of reinstalling the operating system and other applications. Is there any advice?”
As mentioned in Scenario, it is bothering to reinstall Windows Server 2016 operating system and other applications one by one on the new hard drive. Windows Server 2016 has a built-in tool, Windows Server Backup, allowing you to make a backup. And then you need to restore the backup image. It seems still a little bit troublesome.
To save time and energy, you can employ AOMEI Partition Assistant Server to clone Server 2016 to SSD/HDD without reinstallation. That cloning software requires no complicated operation but a few clicks to complete hard drive duplication, and it is featured with the following highlights:
☞ With two copying methods: clone only used space and clone every sector even unused, it allows you to clone hard drive to smaller one or clone BitLocker hard drive effortlessly. ☞ It supports (NVMe) SSD, HDD, SSHD, SD card, etc. And it allows you to clone MBR system disk to GPT disk and vice versa with secure boot. ☞ During the cloning process, it enables you to perform 4k alignment for SSD, which can improve SSD’s performance.
To make better use of it, keep on reading to learn steps of Windows Server 2016 clone disk. You can download the demo version to have a try! It also works with the newest Windows Server 2025, and all Server 2022/2019/2012 (R2)/2008(R2) and Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7.
Firstly, connect the destination SSD or HDD to your machine (the capacity of the target disk should not be smaller than the used space of the source disk) and install AOMEI Partition Assistant Server. Then do the steps given below:
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.
When your new SSD is not big enough to contain all data saved on the previous one, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant to clone only Server 2016 OS-related partitions not all partitions to the target disk, and use the original HDD as a data storage device. Let’s how it works:
Step 1. Run AOMEI Partition Assistant Server and click “Clone” in the top toolbar, and choose “Migrate OS”.
Step 2. Choose an unallocated space on SSD and click “Next” button.
Step 3. Here you can adjust the system partition on the SSD. Then, click “Next” button.
Remember the Note about how to boot from the cloned disk and click “Next”.
Step 4. After confirming the operation, click “Apply”>“Proceed” to execute it.
After copying Windows Server 2016 hard drive to another one or copying only OS-related partitions, you need to change boot order to boot from the cloned disk; or you can switch the old disk with the new one and boot from it directly. What's more, if you clone MBR disk to GPT disk or GPT to MBR, you need to change boot mode accordingly.
To clone Server 2016 hard drive to another one, “Disk Clone Wizard” of AOMEI Partition Assistant Server can help you to complete this task without obstacles. When the used space of the original disk is larger than the target one, you can delete unnecessary files and uninstall applications before cloning.
If the size of the target disk is still smaller, you can use the feature “Migrate OS to SSD” to migrate OS drive in Windows Server 2016 to SSD/HDD and keep the hard drive for data storage. You can make your choice about migrating Server 2016 according to different situations.
Apart from allowing Windows Server users to clone disk, AOMEI Partition Assistant Server has many other functions, such as recovering lost partition, converting MBR to GPT without losing data, etc. To enjoy those functions on unlimited Servers/PCs within one company with only one license, you can employ AOMEI Partition Assistant Unlimited.
