Cloning your knockout drive or SSD is a square way to play all your data , apps , and mise en scene over to a new parkway . That get you get all the benefit ofa fresh drive , like faster operation , bang-up content , and more advanced features , without having to install everything from scratch . And with the right tool , you do n’t even necessitate to compensate anything .

Here ’s how to clone your hard drive , for spare .

Before you begin

This guide will presume you have a drive you ’re clone from ( a source drive ) and a drive you ’re clone to ( the destination drive ) , and that both are installed and ready for exercise . If they are n’t , look into out our guides onhow to grease one’s palms an SSD , andhow to build a PC– orinstall an SSD in your laptop computer .

Before you get protrude , just threefold tick that there is n’t any data on the destination thrust . If there is , and it ’s significant , make certain you back it up , as that drive will be completely wiped as part of the cloning process .

How clone a hard drive

There are a phone number of great disk cloning applications out there , but to make this template as widely useful as possible , we ’ll be using the free version of Disk Genius . There arepaid - for versionswhich you may get for a one - off fee and summate extra feature of speech , but they are n’t necessary to clone a hard drive .

Step 1 : DownloadDiskGenius from the prescribed site , and install it like you would any other program . Take promissory note of its specific instructions about where to add the app – IE . Not on the destination drive .

Step 2 : Launch DiskGenius . It ’ll open up its main partitioning view , breaking down each of your drive into their respective partitions , and giving you flock of information about your various capacity and facility .

Make certain that both your beginning driving force and name and address drive are listed . Then , when ready , selectToolsfrom the top - bar card , come byClone Disk .

Step 3 : In the bug out - up window , select the source disk and selectOK .

Step 4 : choose the destination drive where you want to copy the data , then selectOK . Double check you ’re select the right cause , too , as the last thing you want to do is clone your drive over the top of important existing data .

If you select a drive with a bootable Windows installation , it will suggest you do a system migration , instead . If that ’s applicable to you , follow the on - screen instructions for that . The process is very alike to cloning , but with just a couplet of superfluous , straightforward step .

tone 5 : On the final CRT screen , double check that the selected drives are the right 1 , then tell it what to copy . Copying all filing cabinet will be available whatever the drive sizes , but if you ’re cloning onto a larger destination drive , you may also copy over the sectors and sectionalisation layout .

If you ’re happy , selectStart .

Step 6 : Confirm you ’re happy to proceed , and selectOK .

Step 7 : take how you want the cloning to take stead . The first choice , is " Hot migration , " where it clones the drive while it ’s active . If you ’d rather it come together everything down first , and make a partition inaccessible during the cloning process to insure the sanctitude of the information , selectLock and do .

Step 8 : Wait for the cloning process to end . Depending on the size of it and hurrying of your drives , this can take some clock time .