How to Easy Copy Hard Drive to Hard Drive in Windows 11/10

Why need to copy hard drive to another?

Copying a hard drive to another is a common practice with various practical benefits. Here are some reasons why you might need to do this:

1. Backup and data security

Creating a copy of your hard drive ensures you have a backup of important data. If the original drive fails due to hardware issues, accidental deletion, or malware attacks, you can easily recover your files from the duplicate drive.

2. Upgrading to a larger or faster drive

When upgrading to a larger-capacity or faster drive, like transitioning from an HDD to an SSD, copying your hard drive allows you to transfer all your data, including the operating system, applications, and settings, without reinstalling everything from scratch.

3. Replacing a failing drive

Hard drives have a limited lifespan. If your drive shows signs of failure, such as frequent crashes or unusual noises, copying the data to a new drive ensures you don't lose your files before the old drive becomes unusable.

4. Install the same Windows onto several computers

When dealing with multiple computers that share the same configuration, installing the operating system individually on each device can be time-consuming. Instead, you can streamline the process by installing the system on one computer and then cloning it to the main hard drives of the others.

What is the fastest way to clone a hard drive?

The most efficient way to copy a hard drive is by using specialized disk cloning software. These programs create a bit-by-bit copy of the drive, ensuring no data is left behind.

Choosing the right hard drive cloning software can be challenging with so many options available. To help, here are key criteria to consider:

▸ Reliability: The software must clone your entire hard drive, including all system-related partitions. Missing any critical partitions may render the target drive unbootable.

▸ Efficiency: A good tool completes the cloning process quickly, avoiding unnecessarily long wait times.

▸ Flexibility: The ideal software should support various cloning needs, such as cloning to a smaller drive or copying individual partitions.

▸ User-friendly interface: An intuitive and straightforward interface is essential, especially for non-technical users, making the process simple and accessible.

Based on these standards, AOMEI Partition Assistant is an excellent choice. It can clone all partitions, including hidden ones like recovery partitions, from one disk to another. With its user-friendly interface, even beginners can use it easily. The software supports cloning HDDs to other HDDs or SSDs of different sizes, and it also allows partition cloning and OS migration to HDDs or SSDs, providing a versatile and reliable solution.

How to easy copy hard drive to hard drive

This section provides a step-by-step guide on how to clone a hard drive to another, whether it's larger or smaller, using AOMEI Partition Assistant.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, click "Clone" in the main interface, and select "Clone Disk".

Step 2. Choose the hard disk that you need to clone as the source disk and click "Next".

Step 3. Select the destination disk to store the data on the source disk, and then click "Next".

Step 4. Then, you can check the source and destination disk in the next window or change to "Sector to Sector clone", and click the "Confirm" button to continue if there is no problem.

Here, you can also click the "Settings" button to adjust the partition size on the destination disk or tick "4k alignment" to optimize performance of SSD.

① Clone without resizing partitions: all partition will be cloned to the target disk as the original partition size. It is available when the target disk is large enough to hold all partitions on the source disk.
② Fit partitions to entire disk: all partitions will be cloned to the target disk and take up its full capacity according to the original partition size proportion.
③ Edit partitions on this disk: you can change every partition size on the target disk as you need.

Step 5. After returning to the main interface, check the pending operation and click "Apply" and "Proceed" to commit the operation.

Conclusion

Now you know how to easy copy hard drive to hard drive in Windows 11/10/8/7. Beyond disk cloning, AOMEI Partition Assistant offers additional powerful features. It allows you to allocate free space between partitions, recover deleted partitions, convert system disks between MBR and GPT without deleting partitions, and transform dynamic disks into basic disks without data loss.

For cloning Windows Server hard drives, AOMEI Partition Assistant Server provides the optimal solution, tailored to meet server-specific needs.