Why do you need to clone a hard disk?
By cloning/ copying a hard disk, you can make a duplicate of your current hard disk. It’s a nice choice to duplicate your hard drive under the two following conditions:
-
Upgrade to SSD or larger disk without apps and OS reinstallation: If you want to replace your old hard disk with SSD or a larger disk while keeping all apps & current OS, you can copy disk to transfer all data, including OS to another one.
-
Back up your system and data for safety: Through disk copy, you can get an exact backup of what is stored on your hard disk in use. Thus you can quickly replace the original hard drive with the cloned one if the current disk is failing.
Without knowing anything of the disk clone, I did suffer the tedious and tiresome work before. That happened when I just entered college and had my own PC. In order to avoid data loss due to my improper operation since I was not familiar with using a computer then, I decided to back up all the things the D drive to my USB flash drive. Then, I copied the files and folders one by one. The result turned out literally frustrating – some boot files of apps are lost during the copy-paste process and I can no longer boot those apps.
Why do you need to clone a partition?
Partition Clone can help you quickly back up your important partition or migrate partition from one hard disk to another hard disk so as to prevent data loss caused by program error or some other accidental affairs. This function can be useful, either as a means of making a backup or for the distribution of an identical environment to multiple computers.
How to clone disks/partitions in AOMEI Partition Assistant?
As Windows has no built-in disk cloner, this time, a powerful and versatile utility whose name is AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is introduced.
Preparations before disk clone
There’re some important things you should do before the disk clone begins.
1. Prepare a new hard disk that’s not smaller than the used space of the current disk and make sure the new disk is detectable. If there’s any data on the new hard disk, back them up first.
2. Remove some unwanted files and uninstall unimportant programs from the source disk to shorten copy time.
3. Download and install the demo of AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.
AOMEI Partition Assistant Disk Clone Wizard Brief Tutorial:
When everything is ready, let’s begin with the disk clone first.
Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional and go to “Tools > Disk Clone Wizard”.
Step 2. Choose a proper method:
Step 3. In disk map, choose the source disk which needs to be backed up.
Step 4. Choose the destination disk: (Note: The destination disk should be equal or larger than the source disk, all the data on the destination disk will be covered by the files on the source disk, so, make sure there is no important data on it)
Step 5. Copy disk options:
-
Copy without resizing partitions: The source disk configuration will be copied on the new disk with same partitions size
-
Fit partitions to the entire disk: The partitions on the source disk will occupy the entire destination disk
-
Edit partition on this disk: You could change the size of the on the new disk
Step 6. If you copy the disk containing the system partition, you will receive the following message which guides you on how to boot OS from the destination disk:
Step 7. Back to the main window, click "Apply" on the toolbar to commit the operations.
AOMEI Partition Assistant Partition Clone Wizard Brief Tutorial:
Step 1. Click "Partition Clone Wizard" and choose the proper method:
Step 2. Select the source partition, here we choose D partition to copy:
Step 3. Select the destination partition (The destination should be unallocated space that is equal or larger than the source partition):
Step 4. In the main window, you could define the new partition info:
-
Create a primary partition or logical partition in the drop-down menu
-
Change the default drive letter as you wish
-
Adjust the partition size by dragging
Step 5. Back to the main window, click "Apply" on the toolbar to proceed. After rebooting, you will see the changes:
Note: If the disk you want to clone contains OS, you will be prompted to enter into the Restart Mode.
Conclusion
How to use the Disk/Partition clone wizards of AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional correctly? After reading the step-by-step tutorial, hopefully, you can get it done on your own. This AOMEI product also has many other useful features for disk management including app mover and schedule defrag. If you want to apply this software on Server PCs for disk management, you can try the Server edition.