Freeware to Clone HDD to SSD of Different Sizes Easily

Why need to clone HDD to SSD of different sizes?

Can I clone a 1TB HDD to a 500GB SSD?
Hello, all experts. I have a 1TB hard disk drive, but only 50GB used. Several days ago, I just got a 500GB SSD drive from my brother. So, i wonder if I can clone the 1TB HDD to 500GB SSD drive?Thanks a lot!

Compared with traditional mechanical HDD, the SSD drive is supposed to be better in performance. It can significantly speed up computer. However, the SSD tends to be smaller in capacity than the HDD at the same price level. So, many users want to replace their bigger HDD with smaller SSD drive by cloning. But is it possible to clone HDD to SSD of different sizes?

Find powerful software for disk clone of different sizes

Luckily, it is really possible to clone hard drive with different sizes, no matter you want to clone bigger HDD to smaller SSD, or smaller HDD to larger SSD drive, as long as you get a proper disk cloning tool. Here we highly recommend the freeware: AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. It comes with two different disk clone methods: “Clone Disk Quickly” and “Clone Sector-by-Sector”, which allow you to clone HDD to SSD of different sizes.

✔ If you clone a smaller HDD to a larger SSD or SSD with the same size, you can do sector by sector clone which refers to clone all sectors of HDD no matter it is used or not so that you get a 100% identical copy and AOMEI guarantee the job success even there are blank sectors or logically bad sectors.
✔ If you clone HDD to a smaller SSD, you are allowed to clone only used space so to make a successful clone. Since there are both used and unused spaces on the drive, clone only used space will reduce the occupied space without cloning the unused space on drive.

Next, let’s see details of how to clone HDD to SSD different sizes with the freeware - AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.

Steps to clone HDD to SSD of different sizes

AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard works well with all Windows editions including Windows 7/8/8.1/10/XP/Vista. Before you clone HDD to SSD, you should connect the SSD to your computer and free download AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. Click "All Tools" ->“Disk Clone Wizard” in the left pane.

Step2. In the pop-up window, choose “Clone Disk Quickly” or “Sector by sector Clone”.

Step 3. Choose the HDD as the source disk (here is Disk 1).

Step 4. Choose your SSD as destination disk (here is Disk3), and tick the box before “Optimize the performance of SSD” to clone HDD to SSD alignment.

Step 5. you can adjust the partition size on SSD here.

★Tips:

The first option “Clone without resizing partitions” is gray out, because the SSD is smaller than the HDD here.

Fit partitions to entire disk” will adjust partitions on SSD automatically.

Edit partitions on this disk” allows you to resize a single partition once a time by sliding leftward or rightward.

Step 6. It will give you a note, read it and click “Finish” back to the main interface.

Step 7. you can preview the result, and do remember to “Apply” the operation.

✍ Note: For cloning system disk, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard supports MBR to MBR; if you need to clone MBR system disk or copy GPT disk to MBR/GPT, please upgrade to Professional version.

Wrap things up

As you can see, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard can clone HDD to SSD of different sizes effortlessly. And it enjoys many useful functions, such as migrate OS from HDD to SSD, copy single data partition and resize partition, etc. Try it and it will not let you down.