Cloning a hard drive is a good option if you plan to migrate to a new computer, back up valuable data, or upgrade to an SSD/another larger disk. So how to clone a hard drive in Windows 11/10/8/7 without data loss? The professional hard drive cloning software from MiniTool will do a favor.
Why Clone Hard Drive to Another Hard Drive
Before introducing how to clone a hard drive, let’s have a general understanding of cloning a hard drive. Disk cloning is the process of copying all the data on a hard drive to another hard drive and it refers to a 1-to-1 copy of a hard disk, not just its files. The file system, partitions, drive metadata, and slack space of the disk are duplicated. If you clone a system disk, everything including system files, settings, apps, registry, etc. is cloned.
Usually, you choose to clone a hard drive for a disk upgrade. To be specific, your original hard disk suffers from a lack of disk space and you want to get more storage capacity to store the original disk data. Or your PC runs slowly and cloning a hard drive to a larger one such as an HDD or SSD is a good option.
In addition, if your hard drive malfunctions due to some reason, you can choose to clone the disk data to another one for disk backup.
Beyond these two situations, you may notice the query of “how to clone a hard drive to a new computer”. Should you purchase a new PC, migrating all the disk data from the old computer to the new one ensures you still access the same settings and data on the new device.
Speaking of hard drive clone, the target drive can be a larger hard drive, a solid-state drive, or a USB flash drive. It’s up to you.
Also read: How to Upgrade to Larger Hard Drive Without Data Loss?
What to Do Before Cloning a Hard Drive to Another
After knowing why clone a hard drive, before starting the cloning process, there are some things you should pay attention to.
1. Prepare a proper hard drive
Make sure your hard drive is compatible with your PC. Some PCs use an M.2 SSD as the system disk while some use a SATA SSD, PCIe SSD, 2.5-inch hard drive, 3.5-inch hard drive, or another disk with other factors. Just purchase a proper one based on your PC’s model.
Besides, make sure the hard drive has enough disk space to save the disk data on the original hard drive. If the original disk has 500GB of space, it is recommended to prepare a new SSD/HDD with 1TB of space or more. Of course, you can use a 500GB or smaller hard drive but you should make sure the disk can hold all the disk data of the original disk. That way, you can clone HDD to smaller SSD/HDD.
2. Make sure no important data is saved to your SSD
If you store some important files in the new hard drive, back up them to another location since the cloning process can overwrite all the disk space and you don’t want to lose any data.
3. Prepare the right cable for your laptop
If you are using a laptop that only has one hard drive slot, prepare a SATA to USB cable or another USB adapter (M.2 to USB/NVME to USB) based on the disk factor to connect the new hard drive to your PC for disk cloning.
How to Clone a Hard Drive in Windows 11/10/8/7
After preparing some things, now it is time to start the cloning task. So how to clone a hard drive in Windows 11/10/8/7? This sounds technical but things become easy with the help of MiniTool software. On the market, there are many great cloning tools for Windows, and MiniTool ShadowMaker and MiniTool Partition Wizard stand out. Now, let’s see how to clone a hard drive without losing data to another hard drive with them one by one.
How to Copy a Hard Drive with MiniTool ShadowMaker
At first blush, MiniTool ShadowMaker is a professional and free backup software to help you create a backup for the Windows operating system, files, folders, disks, and partitions.
In addition, it can be a good hard drive cloner. It offers a feature called Clone Disk that can be found in Tools that enables you to easily clone the entire system disk or data disk to another hard drive or clone HDD to SSD within simple steps. Besides, you can use this feature to clone an SD card to another SD card or clone a USB drive to another USB drive.
MiniTool ShadowMaker is compatible with Windows 11/10/8/7 and you can run it properly on the PC. It is free, easy to use, safe, reliable, and widely loved by many people. So, don’t hesitate to hit the following button to download this free hard drive cloning software. Then, double-click on the installer and follow the on-screen instructions to finish the installation for cloning a hard drive to a larger one or a smaller one.
MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Let’s explore the detailed steps on how to clone a hard drive to another hard drive or USB:
Step 1: Use a proper cable to connect your target drive such as an external hard drive, an SSD, an HDD, a USB drive, etc. to a PC first.
Step 2: Launch MiniTool ShadowMaker Trial Edition by double-clicking on the icon of this hard drive cloner. Then, click Keep Trial after finishing the loading process. The trial edition allows you to free use within 30 days.
Step 3: Navigate to the Tools window in the left pane and then tap on Clone Disk to continue.
Step 4: In the new window, choose the system disk (disk 1) as the source disk and click Next. Then, select the connected drive as the target disk. Next, click Start to begin. As you are cloning a system disk, this hard drive cloning software will pop up a window to ask you to register it. Just do it and the process will proceed.
Step 5: After cloning, you need to manually replace the old disk with the new hard drive. Just open your laptop or desktop, remove the old one, and put the new disk in the hard drive’s slot. Then, you can boot the Windows operating system from the cloned disk.
That’s a comprehensive guide on “how to clone a hard drive Windows 11/10/8/7 without losing data to another hard drive”. Also, this tutorial applies if you wonder “how to clone a hard drive to a new computer”, “how to clone PC to external hard drive” or “how to clone a hard drive to USB”. Get ready? Get MiniTool ShadowMaker to get started.
MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
How to Clone a Hard Drive to Another Hard Drive with MiniTool Partition Wizard
In addition to MiniTool ShadowMaker, another hard drive cloning software, MiniTool Partition Wizard can also be your good assistant. It offers two options to clone your hard drive with ease:
Migrate OS to SSD/HD Wizard: This is designed to help transfer the entire system disk or only migrate the operating system to another hard drive. This feature involves the OS migration and doesn’t concern the data disk.
Related post: Easily Migrate Windows 10 to SSD Without Reinstalling OS Now!
Copy Disk Wizard: This feature is similar to the Clone Disk feature in MiniTool ShadowMaker. It helps to clone your hard drive, SD card, USB flash drive, HDD, SSD, etc. to another hard drive or storage device. In terms of cloning a hard drive, a data disk or system disk can be cloned.
MiniTool Partition Wizard DemoClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
Next, let’s see how to copy a hard drive in Windows 11/10/8/7. Here, we take Copy Disk Wizard as an example.
Step 1: Connect your hard drive or another device to the PC and launch MiniTool Partition Wizard.
Step 2: Click Copy Disk Wizard from the left pane to continue.
Step 3: Choose a disk to copy. Here, we choose the system disk.
Step 4: Select an external hard drive, a new hard drive, SSD, etc. as the target disk.
Step 5: Choose a clone method – Fit partitions to entire disk or Copy partitions without resizing.
Step 6: After learning about the note of booting from the destination disk, go back to the main interface of MiniTool Partition Wizard and click Apply to execute the hard drive clone process.
To sum up, MiniTool Partition Wizard also effectively facilitates cloning a hard drive.
What to Do After Cloning a Hard Drive
Now you know how to clone a hard drive to another in Windows 11/10/8/7 with MiniTool ShadowMaker and MiniTool Partition Wizard and just follow the given step-by-step comprehensive guide. Then, a question comes: what to do after cloning HDD to SSD? Pay attention to some tips.
- Access your target hard drive and check if all the disk data of the original disk is cloned.
- If you use a laptop, open the back of this machine, remove the original disk, and put the SSD/HDD in the original place.
- If you want to use the original disk as the data storage device on your desktop, format it and re-partition it.
- If your PC has two slots, you may plan to install a second hard drive to your laptop or desktop and boot the system from the cloned drive.
To boot the PC from the cloned hard disk, make sure your boot mode is correct. For MBR, use the Legacy BIOS boot mode. For GPT, run the UEFI boot mode. Or else, the cloned SSD cannot boot.
Further Reading: How to Clone a Hard Drive Mac
Some of you may be using a Mac and want to perform a hard drive clone, then you may ask: how to clone a Mac hard drive?
MiniTool software is hard drive cloning software designed for Windows 11/10/8/7. If you need to clone a hard drive on a Mac, go to search for a professional hard drive cloner for macOS online. According to users, Carbon Copy Cloner, CloneZilla, SuperDuper, etc. are recommended. Just get one of them, launch it, and follow the wizards on the screen to finish the cloning process.
Related post: Best Alternative to Carbon Copy Cloner for Windows to Back up PC
Bottom Line
After reading this post, you know much information on cloning a hard drive including why clone a hard drive, what to do before a hard drive clone, how to clone a hard drive to a new hard drive in Windows 11/10/8/7, what to do after cloning and how to clone a Mac hard drive. Just run a professional hard drive cloner for cloning a hard drive on Windows or Mac.
Speaking of “how to clone a hard drive to a new computer”, also take those steps mentioned above using MiniTool software. This related post – Transfer OS from One Computer to Another: Windows 11/10 may introduce some details.
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Vera is an editor of the MiniTool Team since 2016 who has more than 7 years’ writing experiences in the field of technical articles. Her articles mainly focus on disk & partition management, PC data recovery, video conversion, as well as PC backup & restore, helping users to solve some errors and issues when using their computers. In her spare times, she likes shopping, playing games and reading some articles.