How do I clone a hard drive please?

SuperSaiyan4

SuperSaiyan4

SuperSaiyan4

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I've been building computers for many years now and one of the things I have never done is clone a hard drive.

Basically I built a PC for a relative who now wants a larger SSD in the PC but wants to transfer everything over from the smaller SSD to a larger one.

The PC currently has an SSD and a regular hard drive.

Not sure on how to go about copying everything over to a new larger drive, I know that I need some kind of software but other than that not sure what else I need to do i.e. go into bios and change stuff if needed?

The system is an AMD setup, has an ASUS M5A97Pro motherboard v1.
 
There's various ways of going about it, but if the drive is going to be boot device and you want to keep the MBR etc. then best to go with a full clone, which leads you to software solutions- Acronis, MiniTool etc.

Copy the disk across from one to the other (SSD), then pull the old SSD. Obviously the data partition on the new drive will be larger than on the old one, but minitool will give you the options and work that all out for you. Once you're back in the OS booting from the new drive (may need to switch boot device in BIOS if it doesn't automatically) you could then move stuff from the mech drive to the new SSD if required.
 
Last edited:
Flying_Hellfish said:
There's various ways of going about it, but if the drive is going to be boot device and you want to keep the MBR etc. then best to go with a full clone, which leads you to software solutions- Acronis, MiniTool etc.
Click to expand...

Yes the SSD is the primary boot drive and looking to basically copy it fully onto a new SSD.

But not sure how to go about cloning though, do I need to plug the new SSD into the PC and set it as a primary in the bios or keep the current one and put the new one?

Basically I need a step by step please if possible :-(
 
+1 for Macrium.

On another machine (ie yours), install the free version. Then in the software, get it to create a bootable CD/USB stick.


Go to the machine in question, add the second SSD. (Remove other hard drives for now to avoid confusion)
Use this bootable media to boot their machine, then use 'Clone'

Once it's done, turn off, remove media. Replace first SSD with new one. Turn pc on.

Then once Windows is up, turn it off. Add other hard drive(s)
 
Just remember to clone them in the right direction..

Select source drive first, and destination second :D
 
Yup.

Have a quick look at that guide (I've not opened it). It's a pretty logical process once you've got it open, you can't really go wrong.
 
Just a couple of more questions sorry:

1) Is it possible to make the primary hard drive a boot drive only to only have Windows on it and to stop any software from being installed to that drive? I want to force applications to only install on the additional drive.

2) How long would you say it would take to clone a 128gb ssd onto a larger one?
 
yes you can pick custom when it prompts you where to install to,point it to the storage hdd

and idk,but shouldn't take too long
 
I just used samsungs software, clones the computer while it's still on. Very easy, but not sure if it only works going to a samsung drive.
 
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