[Stepwise] How to Clone Disk Windows 11 for free

Why need to clone disk Windows 11?

If you have faced any one of the following situations on Windows 11, cloning the disk will be your best choice.

♥ Transfer all data from one disk to another as a backup.
♥ Replace the failing hard drive with a good one.
♥ Upgrade the current disk to a new one or a large one for better performance.

Why is it better to clone disk Windows 11 than simply copying and pasting every item? First, dragging everything one by one from one drive to another is time-consuming and complicated. Second, not all files can be recognized after moving, for example, some apps may not find their program files. Third, if you want to migrate your operating system to a new drive, how can you just copy and paste it?

To sum up, performing a disk clone Windows 11 is undoubtedly convenient and effective. Scroll down to see how to clone a hard drive on Windows 11.

What to do before Windows 11 clone disk?

If you want to have a successful cloning process, don’t skip this part that offers a bunch of tips you should know before you clone disk Windows 11.

1. Back up necessary data

In case of any accident during the process, you'd better make a copy of anything important or necessary to a safe place.

2. Prepare a new hard drive and initialize it

You need to prepare a new disk (HDD or SSD) to hold everything on your old drive. Remember to initialize the disk to a suitable partition style that is in accordance with the source disk. You can refer to this post to get the detailed steps: Windows 11 Initialize Disk [Easy Ways]

If the prepared hard drive has been used, back up all the wanted data on it because the cloning process will erase everything on the destination disk.

3. Make sure the new disk has more capacity than that of the old disk

One of the factors for successful cloning is that the prepared disk for cloning needs to have more storage space than your original hard drive. If you don't want to get into the trouble of cloning larger hard drive to a smaller one, you at least need to make sure the capacity of the hard drive is larger than the used space of the old disk.

Here are some tips you can try to reduce the used space on the existing drive: remove junk files, delete large files that are rarely used, or move programs to another drive.

4. Get a reliable disk cloning tool

It's known that Windows doesn't have any built-in cloning software to clone disk Windows 11. Luckily, there are lots of third-party disk cloning tools like AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard that can help you easily clone hard drive Windows 11.

Step-by-step tutorial: How to clone disk Windows 11

AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is a free and intuitive hard drive cloner that has powerful cloning features. It is compatible with all editions of Windows 11/10/8/7 and supports all kinds of hard disks including SSD, HDD, M.2 NVMe, etc. You can hardly find any other utilities that are equipped with so many wonderful functions. With this all-in-one tool, you can:

๑ Copy a single partition or a whole hard drive
๑ Clone only used space or every sector
๑ Clone hard drive to USB flash drive
๑ Clone a failing hard disk

Now, download this freeware and try using it to perform Windows 11 clone disk.

Step 1. Connect the new disk to your PC, launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, 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 another drive as the destination 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 the SSD. 

Step 5. After returning to the main interface, check the pending operation and click "Apply" and "Proceed" to commit the operation.

Notes:
✍ The Standard version is only available to clone data disk from MBR to MBR.
✍ If you upgrade to the Professional edition, you can clone a system disk or copy MBR to GPT disk. Besides, its “Migrate OS to SSD” feature allows you to only clone Windows 11 to new drive.
✍ When your Windows 11 PC cannot boot normally, you can clone hard drive from bootbable USB.
✍ There is Server edition for Windows Server 2022, 2019, 2016, 2012(R2), 2008(R2), 2003 users.

Conclusion

On this page, you have learned how to clone disk Windows 11 and what should you do before proceeding. No matter what triggers you to copy a hard drive on Windows 11, choosing AOMEI Partition Assistant will never let you down. It has many useful features waiting for you to explore.