How to Clone OS to New Hard Drive-Complete Guide 2025
When upgrading or replacing your old system drive, cloning the OS to a new HDD/SSD should be the safest and best solution to preserve your familiar existing environment without system reinstallation. This article provides a comprehensive guide on how to clone OS to new hard drive using professional cloning software: AOMEI Partition Assistant.
Scenarios need to clone OS to new hard drive
There are many users want to clone OS to a new hard drive so that they can install programs into the new hard drive without completely reinstalling Windows. Generally in the following Scenarios:
- System drive is running out of space. When the system drive approaches capacity limits, your computer will become slower and slower. To resolve insufficient space on the system drive, migrating the OS from smaller HDD/SSD to a larger one is a good solution.
- Replace HDD with an SSD. Compared with HDD, SSD offers many advantages. Such as:
- Much faster read and write speed;
- Much more stable;
- Better shock resistance, etc.
Migrating OS from HDD to SSD will effectively improve your PC’s performance. It will be faster and more stable after OS migration.
- Replace an old hard drive without reinstalling the operating system. An old hard drive also can slow down the running speed of your computer. If you want to replace the old hard drive with a new one without a system reinstallation, clone OS can help you a lot.
Clone OS to new hard drive - the safest and simplest way for OS migration without reinstalling
Windows does not have a built-in cloning tool. If you want to migrate OS to another hard drive without a third-party cloning software, you can create a system image backup, and restore the system image onto a new hard drive. Thus, it is generally recommended to use third-party cloning software for easier and faster OS clone.
How to choose cloning software? Here are some advice:
Easy-to-use: it offers a user-friendly interface, even a freshman can easily use it to finish the OS clone.
Comprehensive: it should be an all-in-one tool that offers more features such as resizing partitions during the cloning process.
To ensure a boot successful after cloning: the most important thing is to make sure the cloned hard drive can boot properly after system migration.
Based on the three points, the AOMEI Partition Assistant should be the most suitable software for cloning OS to new hard drive.
100% SecureAOMEI Partition Assistant can help Windows users make different cloning tasks with different features:
- The Clone Partition feature allows you to duplicate a single partition to another location effortlessly.
- The Clone Disk feature allows you to clone entire hard drive to another HDD or SSD without any data loss.
- While the Migrate OS feature allows you to clone the entire OS into a new SSD or HDD and boot from the new hard drive after cloning.
More importantly, no matter is Migrating OS to SSD or Cloning disk, the whole process is very simple, even if you are a beginner, you can easily complete it.
How to clone OS to new SSD/HDD with AOMEI Partition Assistant?
Before system migration, you need to do some preparations:
- Connect the destination disk to your PC
Make sure that the destination disk can accommodate your specific Windows data. You may need to initialize the disk in advance.
- Download AOMEI Partition Assistant, and install it on your PC.
The most comprehensive cloning software that allows you to clone OS and boot from the cloned hard drive successfully.
Follow the step-by-step guide to clone OS to a new hard drive with AOMEI Partition Assistant.
Step 1. Click the "Clone" option at the top toolbar. Then choose "Migrate OS". Then, you will get into Migrate OS wizard.
Step 2. Here you can confirm the system information, and then click "Next" to go on.
Step 3. In the pop-out window, you can resize the partition, and assign a drive letter to it. Click “Next” to proceed.
If there is any data on the destination disk, it will pop out a warning window to remind you that the data on the destination disk will be destroyed.
Step 4. Then, You will come to the page where you need to confirm the operations of cloning OS to new hard drive.
During the process, you can click Settings to adjust the partition size on the destination disk.
Or you can manage your hard disk drive space such as resizing partitions, creating partitions, and so on after cloning. click Save, and click Next.
Step 5. Click “Apply” in the main interface to execute the pending operation.
How to boot from the cloned new hard drive after cloning?
Some users have met the problem that the cloned SSD/HDD boot failed.
If you kept the old OS drive on your PC, you need to enter BIOS and change boot order to boot from the cloned SSD/HDD.
Besides checking boot order, changing boot mode also be helpful. After cloning OS from GPT to MBR or MBR to GPT, you must change the boot mode accordingly:
GPT → MBR: Switch from UEFI to Legacy mode.
MBR → GPT: Switch from Legacy to UEFI mode.
How to deal with the old drive after cloning?
Don't dispose of your old disk casually!
- If you don’t want dual operating systems on your computer, you can delete the old system partition, or even wipe the entire drive, so you can reuse it as a storage drive.
- If you want to sell the old system drive, or give it to your friend, remember to wipe data on the old system drive with AOMEI Partition Assistant to prevent your data be recovered.
Summary
Now, you should know how to clone OS to new hard drive and boot from it successfully after clone. With AOMEI Partition Assistant, OS clone should be an easy and safe thing.
Besides, it can move installed programs to another drive to solve the problem "C: drive is full", merge partition, make bootable media and more advanced features. If you are running Windows Server OS, please switch to AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.
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