Why clone hard drive in Windows 10?
Cloning hard drive is to make an exact copy of everything on it. If it is a system disk, the cloned drive is bootable. Hence, we summarize some reasons account for this:
First, computers are fragile and vulnerable to virus attacks and encounter various problems, such as system crash, disk failure, milk spilling, etc. To prevent this from beginning, making a backup copy by cloning hard drive in Windows 10 is a good choice.
Second, the disk has high usage due to increasing programs, data and limited space. Some users choose to free up disk space by uninstalling programs, delete data, but this does very little. Hence, you may want to upgrade hard drive to larger one with cloning method.
Third, using old disks comes along with a computer for a long time, you may find it boot slower, the programs stuck sometimes, the browser respond slowly, in this case, you need to boost computer performance. The best way is to clone hard drive to SSD in Windows 10.
Free hard drive cloning software for Windows 10
Whatever your purpose, to achieve it, you need the best free disk clone software in Windows 10. AOMEI Backupper Standard is a great option, it has user friendly interface and easy to operate, and it’s totally free. Below are some advantages for disk clone process:
Intelligent clone(default): It clone only used sectors, whether it’s a data disk or system disk, thus you don’t need to worry about not enough space during the cloning process. It makes it easy to clone larger drive to smaller drive or SSD without boot issue.
Sector by sector clone: In contrast to Intelligent clone, which clone all sectors of a disk, not only the used sectors, but also blank sectors and bad sectors. So it needs to be used with caution.
Live clone: It allows you to clone hard drive to another while not sopping any work during this process.
4k alignment: It is a feature to improve reading or writing speed of SSD disk while cloning HDD to SSD in Windows 10.
Support all types of disks: It supports hard drive or SSD with different interface (SATA, NVMe, PCIe, etc) and all disk brands, such as, SanDisk, Samsung, WD, Seagate, etc.
Clone hard drive in Windows 10 step by step
Here I will show you to clone hard drive in Windows 10 in detail. Before starting, please check the following contents:
- The used disk space for both hard drives. Please be sure the destination disk is larger than or equal to source disk, otherwise the cloning process will fail finally.
- The disk types for both disks. The free version of cloning software only supports cloning MBR disk to MBR disk if the source disk has Windows installed on it. Go to disk management, right-click the corresponding disk and select Properties, then check partition style (MBR or GPT) under the Volume tab.
- If your computer has extra slot. If it has, you can install second hard drive in Windows 10 directly. If not, prepare a SATA cable or Adapter for connecting.
Then, continue to see below and learn the steps to clone hard drive in Windows 10:
- Download AOME Backupper Standard and install it. Then, launch it, click on Clone and then Disk Clone.
Tip: If you want to only transfer OS to new drive, try System Clone feature on the premium version.
- Select the hard drive currently in Windows 10 and click Next.
- Select the new hard drive or SSD disk as destination and click Next.
Warning: After this operation, the existing partitions on the destination disk will be overwritten or deleted, so we suggest you to backup them if there are any important data on the destination disk.
- Tick SSD Alignment to improve SSD disk performance if you are cloning HDD to SSD in Windows 10. And then click Start Clone to begin the cloning process.
★Note: Edit Partitions (supported by professional version) and Sector by Sector Clone can be used together. To clone and resize hard drive, or clone MBR to GPT disk and vice versa, select Edit Partitions as first options.
Summing it up
Cloning hard drive in Windows 10 is necessary when you want to make a backup copy, get more space or boost computer performance. AOMEI Backupper Standard is a great option, which is suitable for all users, even for novices.