By Emily / Last Updated April 26, 2023

"Can I clone just the operating system?"

"My Windows 10 OS runs on a SanDisk HDD, but it begins to fail. So I bought a new SDD hoping that I would be able to clone the OS from the failing hard drive to it. But I have never done this (copying OS from one drive to another) before. So anyone can tell how can I copy OS from one drive to another? Or is there any free OS clone software? Thanks!"

Suffer from OS running slow or failing and want to clone the old hard drive to a new HDD or SSD? Buy a new computer and want to enjoy the OS environment on the old one? Plan to make a system backup in case of unexpected disasters? In either situation, you can clone the OS to the destination location without reinstalling Windows 10 system & installed applications. Thus, you will need proper OS cloning software.

Best OS clone software- migrate only OS to another disk

The OS (system) cloning software, as its name implies, is to clone the original operating system from one disk to another storage device such as a hard disk drive (HDD), solid-state drive (SSD) or other external hard drives. Then you can obviate the need to reinstall OS from scratch, which can be a tedious process especially when the Windows activation keys are not available any longer. If you have no idea how to identify a reliable OS cloning utility, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Its "Migrate OS to SSD Wizard" can clone Windows 11/10/8/7 OS from one drive to another hard drive (HDD or SSD). Besides, it also allows you to:

▶Copy OS partition to a smaller hard drive as long as the available space on the destination disk is equal to, or larger than the used space of the current OS partition or disk.

▶Boot your OS from the target disk after the OS clone since it will copy everything necessary for system startup.

Steps to clone OS from one hard drive to another

Now you can press the below button to download the OS clone software free and learn how to clone only OS partition to another disk in Windows 11/10 PC. To clone the Server OS partition, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.

Download Demo Win 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
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★Tips:
 Ensure the destination disk has an unallocated space, equal to or larger than the used space of OS partition. If no unallocated space, create one by deleting or shrinking existing partitions.
 Back up everything important on the destination disk because this process will delete all data inside.
Check whether there are some bad sectors or errors on the original system drive.

Step 1. Install and run the AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Then you can get into the main interface of this software; click “Clone” on in the top toolbar, and choose “Migrate OS”.

Migrate Os To Ssd

Step 2. In the next window, choose an unallocated space on the destination HDD or SSD( or you need to tick the option of "I want to delete all partitions on this disk X to migrate system to the disk"), and then click "Next" to go on.

Select Disk Space

Step 3. In the pop-out window, you could resize the partition, assign a drive letter to it, or just keep default settings and click “Next”.

Resize Partition

Step 4. A helpful note about boot problem will appear. Read it in case you might meet some boot failure problems after OS migration. Then click “Finish”.

Note

Step 5. Click “Apply” in the main interface to start transferring operating system to a new disk.

Apply

One more step: boot from the destination disk

After copying OS from one drive to another via the free system clone software, now you need to insert the target disk into your computer and reboot it, change the boot order to set the PC boot from it:

1. Start your computer and keep pressing ESC, F1, F2, F8 or F10 during the initial startup screen to enter BIOS setting.

2. In the Boot option, change boot order, select new HDD/SSD as the new boot drive and save all the changes.

Change Order

3. Finally, restart the computer, you should be able to see Windows OS running on your new disk without any problems.

If the cloned hard drive or SSD won't boot, you might need to check whether the system files or the Master Boot Record of the current system drive are intact.

Summary

So, with this powerful OS clone software, you can easily copy OS partition to another hard drive as you wish. If you want to clone the entire OS disk (both OS partition and other data partitions) to another disk, you can try the "Disk Clone" function. Moreover, it is far more than an OS copying utility, and it is also a MBR to GPT converter (allowing you to convert disk between MBR and GPT without deleting existing partitions), an SD card repair tool, MBR repair tool, and more.