#Clone hard drive to ssd how to#
#Clone hard drive to ssd install#
#Clone hard drive to ssd software#
#Clone hard drive to ssd Pc#
#Clone hard drive to ssd free#

Clone Your Drive (Credit: PCMag / DiskGenius) Once the drive has been initialized, you should see it show up in the bottom pane of Disk Management as unallocated space. See our guide to troubleshooting a hard drive that won't show up for more. If you aren't prompted to initialize the drive, and don't see it in Disk Management, double-check that it's properly connected to your computer, and that the enclosure or dock is powered on (if necessary).

#Clone hard drive to ssd Pc#

If you aren't sure, look up your specific PC model (or motherboard if you built your computer) to see which type of firmware it uses. If you have an older PC with a traditional BIOS, you may need to use an MBR partition table. I'll be using GPT for my SSD, since I have a modern PC with a UEFI firmware. It will prompt you to initialize the drive using either the GPT or MBR partition table.

Click the Create and format hard disk partitions option, and Disk Management will open. Open the Start menu and type 'partitions' in the search box.

If it's a brand-new drive, you probably won't see the drive pop up in File Explorer, but don't worry it just needs to be initialized first. Plug your SSD into the adapter, then plug that into your computer.

#Clone hard drive to ssd install#

In this case, you can just install it internally alongside your old hard drive. If you're using a laptop with only one hard drive slot, that means you'll need an external adapter, dock, or enclosure that can connect your bare SSD to your computer over USB.Īgain, desktop users may not need this if they have room for two drives inside their PC. Plug In and Initialize Your SSD Orico Hard Drive Docking Station (Credit: Whitson Gordon)ĭuring this process, you'll need both your SSD and old hard drive connected to your computer at the same time. Once your data is safe and secure, continue to the next step. Otherwise, your data won't fit on the new drive.

#Clone hard drive to ssd free#

This isn't as common as it once was, thanks to bigger, less expensive SSDs, but if that's the case for you, you'll need to delete some files and free up space on your hard drive before cloning it. If you're upgrading to an SSD that's smaller than your current hard drive, you'll want to take extra care here. Copying important data to an external hard drive will also do in a pinch. Windows also has File History for backing up important documents, and an image file can save your entire system.

#Clone hard drive to ssd software#

If you don't have a backup solution yet, check out our favorite software for the job. An accidental click can result in you erasing everything, so do not continue until you've backed it all up.

Back Up Your Data (and Free Up Space) (unknown)īefore you start messing around with your drives, it's absolutely necessary to first back up your data. In that case, you could store Windows and your programs on the SSD while putting your music, movies, and other media on a second, larger hard disk-though this can be a bit more complicated, as we'll discuss below. The only exception is if you're on a desktop computer and have room for multiple hard drives.

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Sorry if that sounds obvious, but some people have tried to test boot their cloned disk while it's still connected via USB, and Windows does not allow itself to be booted from a USB storage device (except Windows To Go, but that's a special setup). The reason is that if you will be performing an image capture and restore, you'll be performing the latter within Rescue, but even if you're performing a clone, if the new disk doesn't immediately boot, you'll want to boot into that Rescue Media and run the Fix Boot Problems wizard.Īnd lastly, if you perform a clone to the new disk while it's attached via a SATA to USB adapter or something, note that you must install that disk internally before you will be able to boot from it. If you would instead be capturing an image backup to an external drive and restoring it onto the SSD because you don't have a way to attach your source and destination disks simultaneously, then Steps 4 and 5 of that article also apply to the image restore wizard, except the option is called 'Restored Partition Properties' rather than 'Cloned Partition Properties'.Īdditionally, before you perform the disk swap, create bootable Rescue Media onto a flash drive within Reflect and confirm that your system boots from it successfully AND that it can see your internal storage and your external storage if applicable.

#Clone hard drive to ssd how to#

This is Macrium's KB article about how to clone a disk, and Steps 4 and 5 show how to resize partitions in order to cover cloning to a smaller disk (or a larger disk if you want to upsize partitions as part of the clone itself). Building on the answer from above, I'm a heavy user of Macrium Reflect, and the Free version will indeed serve your purposes here.