How to Clone Hard Drive on Windows 10 without Reinstalling

Why clone hard drive on Windows 10?

When you buy a new computer or a new hard disk, how can you transfer your current system and all settings to your new devices?

However, there are 2 problems for users: both of the methods mentioned earlier can be quite time-consuming and prone to errors. In fact, a bootable disk is not necessary for cloning a Windows 10 hard drive.

Compared with 2 traditional methods, cloning a hard drive is the process of copying all the contents of one disk to another to create a full 1-to-1 clone of the previous hard drive. And everything on the cloned hard drive, including the operating system and loaded apps, will load and operate as they did on the original disk, eliminating the need to reinstall the operating system and other programs.

Freeware for cloning hard drive on Windows 10

How do you clone a hard drive in Windows 10/11? The most practical and efficient method is to utilize a reputable hard disk cloning program. We'd like to introduce you to the freeware AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. It includes the "Disk Clone Wizard" feature, which is developed specifically for cloning a hard drive or solid-state drive to another drive in all editions of Windows 11/10/8/7 (32-bit and 64-bit), and all all-branded HDDs, SATA/M.2 SSDs, PCIe NVMe SSDs, USB drives, and SD cards, etc. It also provides the following benefits:

★ Tips:

1. For cloning data disk, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is enough. But if you hope to clone system disk to HDD/SSD, please turn to Professional Edition.

2. If you want to clone Windows Server hard drive, switch to AOMEI Partition Assistant Server instead.

Step-by-step: Clone hard drive on Windows 10 for free

Now, this part will take “how to clone a hard drive with Windows 10 on it” as an example to teach you how to clone hard drive on Windows 10 with AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.

★ Please note: ① Connect the target disk to the PC and make sure it can be detected. ② To avoid changing boot mode after cloning, please set the partition style(MBR or GPT) of the target disk as the same as the source disk and back up in advance if there is anything important.

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.

How to clone only system drive to HDD/SSD

If you want to clone only Windows 10 to new hard drive, you can try "Migrate OS to SSD" after upgrading to AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, which can migrate the system partition and related data to the destination disk while other data keep on the source disk.

 Step 1. Download and install AOMEI Partition Assistant. Then, run it and click Clone -> Migrate OS on the main interface.

Step 2. Select an unallocated space on the new hard drive and click "Next".

Step 3. You can resize the system partition in the popped window.

Step 4. Read the note on how to boot from the destination disk as you may need this later.

Step 5. Finally, click Apply to submit the operations.

After the clone, if you want to boot Windows 10 from the cloned drive, you may need to change the boot drive in BIOS or replace the old hard drive with the new cloned one.

Conclusion

With the assistance of AOMEI Partition Assistant, you will be able to quickly and efficiently clone hard drive in Windows 11/10/8/7 without losing any data. This professional software also doubles up as the perfect partition manager and comes with many other amazing functions: clone a partition to another drive, merge partition, move partition, convert MBR and GPT without deleting partitions, wipe hard drive and partition completely, etc. 

FAQs about clone disk Windows 10

1. Will cloning a disk delete data on the destination drive?

• Yes, the cloning process will overwrite any data on the destination drive. Ensure that any important data on the destination drive is backed up before starting the cloning process.

2. Can I clone a larger drive to a smaller drive?

• You can clone a larger drive to a smaller drive as long as the used space on the source drive is less than the total capacity of the destination drive. You may need to delete or move some files to fit the data onto the smaller drive.

3. Do I need to activate Windows 10 again after cloning?

• Generally, Windows 10 should remain activated after cloning if the hardware configuration hasn’t changed significantly. However, if activation issues arise, you can use your product key or Microsoft account to reactivate Windows.

4. What should I do  if my new drive doesn’t boot after cloning?

• If your new drive doesn’t boot:
  1. Verify that the new drive is set as the primary boot device in BIOS/UEFI.
  2. Use the Windows installation media to repair the boot loader by selecting “Repair your computer” > “Troubleshoot” > “Startup Repair”.
  3. Ensure all necessary boot partitions were cloned.

5. How long does it take to clone Windows 10 to SSD?

• The time it takes to clone Windows 10 to a new SSD can vary based on several factors, such as size of used space, disk speed, connection interface... Normally, The typical wait time can range from 30 minutes to a few hours. If you're looking to duplicate a disk with a hefty 500GB of data and a cloning speed of 100 Mb/s, you can expect the cloning process to wrap up in approximately 90 minutes.