Stepwise to Clone Hard Drive to SSD in Windows 7 without Boot Failure

Learn how to clone hard drive to SSD or HDD in Windows 7, 8, 10, 11 without reinstalling OS.

Bryce

By Bryce / Updated on May 12, 2023

Share this: instagram reddit

Why clone Windows 7 hard drive to SSD?

SSD VS HDD

Compared with HDDs, SSDs come with higher reading and writing speed and are more durable.  To boot PC faster or play games more smoothly, it's wise to use an SSD as your boot drive. Installing Windows 7 on the SSD from scratch can troublesome. In such a condition, many users may take cloning Windows 7 hard disk drive to SSD into consideration. Here is an example:

“My PC comes with a 500GB HDD that holds Windows 7. Now I got an Intel 520 Series SSD of 240GB and want to take it as my boot drive. I wanna clone the system HDD to the SSD drive to migrate all data to the new drive. But can I successfully boot Windows after cloning? If I can, how to perform a Windows 7 bootable clone?"

Best software to clone hard drive to SSD in Windows 7/8/8.1/10/11

Windows 7 has no native tools to clone hard drive to SSD, thus it's necessary to apply third-party cloning software to copy Windows 7 hard disk drive to SSD, and AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is a nice choice. 

♦ It can clone hard drive to SSD or HDD of different sizes (small, larger, or equal), of various brands (Samsung, Seagate, SanDisk, etc.).
♦ It won't miss a file (even a hidden file), ensuring the destination SSD bootable after cloning the system drive.
♦ It has no limitation of partition style whether to clone system or data hard drive to another drive in Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7. 
♦ What's more, it can automatically make a 4K alignment of SSD while cloning. 

Step-by-step guide: clone hard drive to SSD in Windows 7/8.1/8/10/11

Now, connect your SSD to the Windows 7 computer and ensure that it can be detected; sort out the old hard drive, delete unnecessary files and transfer important files to another safe place if its used space is larger than SSD’s whole capacity; back up the SSD if there are important files on it. Then, download, install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional and check out the following steps (supposed that you are going to clone Windows 7 hard drive to SSD).

Download Pro DemoWin 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
Secure Download

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional and go to “Clone > Clone Disk”.

clone wizard

Step 2. Choose a proper method:

disk-method

Step 3. In disk map, choose the source disk which needs to be backed up.

source-disk

Step 4. Choose the destination disk: (Note: The destination disk should be equal or larger than the source disk, all the data on the destination disk will be covered by the files on the source disk, so, make sure there is no important data on it)

destination-disk

Step 5. Copy disk options:

  • Copy without resizing partitions: The source disk configuration will be copied on the new disk with same partitions size

  • Fit partitions to the entire disk: The partitions on the source disk will occupy the entire destination disk

  • Edit partition on this disk: You could change the size of the  on the new disk

edit-disk

Step 6. If you copy the disk containing the system partition, you will receive the following message which guides you on how to boot OS from the destination disk:

note

Step 7. Back to the main window, click "Apply" on the toolbar to commit the operations.

apply

★Tips:
If you don’t want to clone the entire hard drive, you can clone OS-related partitions only (data partitions not included) via its Migrate OS to SSD function.
This process needs to be performed under PreOS mode, as it involves the system.
This process can also be applied to clone hard drive to SSD in Windows 10/8.1/8/7. If you are a Windows Server user, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.

After finishing the hard drive to SSD cloning process, to boot PC from the SSD successfully, you need to enter BIOS to set the cloned SSD as the boot device, if you keep your old hard drive and SSD simultaneously. 

Bryce
Bryce · Staff Editor
Bryce is an editor of AOMEI Technology, he covers backup & restore, hard disk & partitions management, cloud files transfer, website & database backup and so on for AOMEI. He enjoys helping people find solutions to their problems. He loves traveling, Sleeping, reserching and so on. He enjoys helping people find solutions to their problems. He loves traveling, Sleeping, reserching and so on. He would like to spend all time on reaserching computer problems. He is a very cute boy.