Free Way to Clone Recovery Partition to External HDD in Windows

What is Recovery Partition?

The recovery partition is a partition where the system contains important files that help restore the factory default settings. It is automatically created when you install OS on a computer, like Dell, HP PC. Once the operating system won’t boot up normally one day, you can enter the recovery partition to restore the failed computer to its factory settings.

Why clone recovery partition to external HDD?

For some users, the recovery partition may take up a lot of space, which will affect the free space on the disk. We all know that if the free space on the hard disk is too small, it will affect the performance of Windows. Therefore, it must be resolved in time.

Due to the limited space on the local hard disk of Windows, the recovery partition is still needed to restore the system in the event of a computer failure. Therefore, deleting the recovery partition of the original disk after cloning Windows recovery partition to external HDD is a good way to free up space.

Besides, you can clone recovery partition to USB to create a bootable recovery USB.

Step-by-step: How to clone recovery partition to external HDD

In order to clone recovery partition easily and successfully, here we recommend a free recovery partition cloner-AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. It has lots of advantages to make itself stand out among so many cloning tools.

● Great compatibility: It supports the mainstream Windows OS, including Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, XP. And it can move recovery partition to HDD/SSD from HP, Acer, Dell, and other brands of computers.
● Clone larger drive to smaller one: It supports cloning large drive to smaller dive as long as the target drive is big enough to hold the used space of recovery partition.
● Clone Windows OS: In addition to cloning the recovery partition to other hard drives, it can also perform operations such as disk clone.

Tips:

1. Before cloning, please connect the external HDD to the Windows PC to make sure it is recognized by the computer.
2. Standard version only supports cloning recovery partition from MBR to MBR, if you want to clone to MBR to GPT, GPT to GPT, GPT to MBR, please upgrade to AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant,  right-click the partition you want to clone and select the "Clone Partition" tool to run partition clone. (You can also click the "Clone" main tab and select "Clone Partition".)

Step 2. In next window, select the destination partition or unallocated space to hold your source partition, and then click "Confirm".

Step 3. Then, you will enter the Confirm interface where you can check the source and destination clone location. After all is set, you can click the "Confirm" button to continue.

Notes:

• There is a "4k alignment" option. If you want to copy a partition onto a SSD (Solid State Drive), ticking this option will optimize the read and write speed on this partition. It can also extend the life of the SSD.
• If you select the "Sector-by-Sector Clone" mode, the unallocated space must be equal or larger than source partition. If you tick the option, it will be unable to resize the destination partition.

Step 4. In the next window, you can click the "Settings" button to adjust the target partition size. As you can see from the screenshot, you could adjust the size of source partition in order to fit the target partition as per your need, or directly skip the step and click "Save".

Step 5. You can preview the partition copy operating by viewing the "Pending Operations". To commit the "Pending Operations", please click "Apply" and "Proceed".

The cloning process will start and you can check the cloning process. Once the process is completed successfully, you will get a congratulation window. Finally, you can check the partition layout on the destination disk will be identical to the source partition.

Conclusion

After cloning recovery partition to external HDD, you can easily restore the Windows operating system when your computer gets errors and fails to boot. Besides, if you delete recovery partition by accident, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional can help you restore deleted recovery partition within simple steps.

In addition, if your computer is running a Server system, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant Server Edition to copy recovery partition to new hard drive.