How to Clone Windows Partition to SSD/USB Without Boot Issues?

“Can Windows partition be cloned?”

“I have used my computer for years and now it worked slowly. Thus, I am planning to get a new 1TB SSD to replace the old only 250GB HDD with Windows 10 installed in order to improve booting speed and performance of my computer. But I just want to keep the Windows partition, not all partitions on the original HDD. So I was wondering can I just clone Windows partition to my new SSD I am getting.”

Cloning a partition is a process of copying all content of one partition on the disk to another partition or disk without losing data. And the destination partition will be loaded with the same data as the source partition. Cloning partition is quite different from “Copy and Paste” or “Drag and Drop”. After cloning partition, all cloned applications or programs can load up as they were on the original partition. Cloning Windows partition is an effective way to transfer the operating system from one disk to another and ensure the OS can boot up as normal.

Software for cloning Windows partition to new drive (SSD/HDD)

When your system is running slowly on the traditional hard drive, it is always a great idea to copy Windows partition to a faster SSD drive. But, how can you perform this special cloning task? The most effective and easiest way is to use a professional disk or partition cloning software such as AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. This software comes with the following amazing features:

☪ “Migrate OS to SSD” designed for users to clone only OS partition from to SSD or HDD. And you can boot from the cloned disk after the cloning completion.

☪ It supports migrating only OS partition between disks of different partition styles, such as from MBR to MBR, GPT to GPT, GPT to MBR as well as MBR to GPT.

☪It can also help you align SSD partition to improve the reading and writing performance of the destination disk.

☪It enables you to copy Windows partition to small disk as long as it has enough space to hold the used space of the source partition.

Furthermore, AOMEI Partition Assistant also provides users with “Disk Clone” and “Partition Clone”. The former allows you to copy whole disk to another hard drive without reinstalling everything, while the latter one is perfect for copying data partition to another disk.

Steps to clone Windows partition to (smaller) disk

Now, let’s take a look at how to clone system/boot drive to another hard drive (SSD or HDD) via AOMEI Partition Assistant.

Before you do:
1. If you are planning to clone Windows 11/10/8/7 partition to a smaller disk, ensure the destination disk can contain the used sectors of the source OS partition, or you can remove unnecessary data from it, and shrink the system drive to a smaller size.
2. This process will require you to delete all existing partitions on the destination hard drive, so please back up important data in advance.
3. If you are cloning Windows partition from MBR disk to GPT, please ensure your motherboard supports UEFI/EFI boot mode because you need to change Legacy to UEFI for a successful boot. If it does not support, you can convert destination disk to MBR before cloning.
4. You can download the Demo Version for a free trial.

Step 1. Install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant. Click “Clone” on in the top toolbar, and choose “Migrate OS”.

Step 2. Choose an unallocated space on the destination disk and click “Next”.

Step 3. In this window, you can resize the partition just being created. Then, click “Next”.

Step 4. Then a note about how to boot OS from SSD/HDD will pop out, read it and click “Finish”.

Step 5. Back to the main interface, click “Apply” on the right top corner to commit the operation.

After the OS partition migration is done, you can replace the old hard drive with the new disk, enter BIOS to change the boot order (make the new hard drive in the first place), then you can boot computer from the cloned disk successfully.

Further study: copy Windows partition to USB

If you want to clone Windows 11/10/8/7 partition to USB flash drive (rather than SSD drive) in order to make a portable Windows USB drive, which you can carry around and run the familiar OS on other computers, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional can satisfy you as well.

This versatile software comes with “Windows To Go Creator”, similar to the “Windows To Go” developed by Microsoft, but much more advanced. Windows native “Windows To Go” can only work on Windows 10 Education/Enterprise/Pro and Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise, and it requires the corresponding Windows ISO files and an over 32GB certified USB drive.

By contrast, “Windows To Go Creator” from AOMEI Partition Assistant can work on all editions of Windows 10/8/7. The non-certified USB drive is also OK as long as it is at least 13GB. Moreover, if you don’t have Windows ISO files available and don’t want to download one, you can even use this function to create Windows To Go USB with current system.

Summary

See? With this powerful disk manager- AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, you can easily and effectively clone Windows partition to SSD or USB drive. In fact, this cloning software offers you various other powerful functions like: allocate free space from one partition to another, convert system disk between MBR and GPT, recover lost partitions and more. To clone Windows Server partition to SSD or HDD, you can download the Server Demo edition.