How to clone a disk in Server 2012 when Windows Server doesn’t provide any disk clone solutions? Here, you’ll find the best third-party disk cloner to get it done without any data loss.
By
Cherry
/ Last Updated May 12, 2023
In Windows Server 2012, disk clone can help a lot:
> Upgrade/replace hard drive: For many reasons, you may want to upgrade your disk to a larger or new one. When you bought a new SSD or HDD, you can clone old hard drive to the new hard drive instead of re-installing OS and other applications to that new hard drive.
> Reactive and restore: Disk clone can be used in system restore. Clean up all data on the original hard drive, and then restore the original data to the hard drive. This operation will recover the functions on the computer and root out the existing virus on computer. It is usually used by internet bar, school, or some other organizations to make sure if users changed the system settings, and brought virus to the computer. You can quickly restore system to “clean” state by re-activation.
> Prepare for new computer’s installation: you can clone a disk with some disk cloning software and install a standard set of software to a computer so that new users can use it instantly without waiting for installation to be completed.
Due to these virtues, you may want to clone disk in Windows Server 2012.
Since Windows Server 2012 has no built-in tool for disk clone, it is pretty necessary to find a professional and reliable tool. And AOMEI Partition Assistant Server definitely will be my preference out of its highlights listed below:
Bootable clone: It can clone all partitions (hidden partitions related with boot are included)on the source disk, make you can boot from the target disk successfully after clone.
High compatibility: This server cloning software supports you to clone hard disk drive, solid state drive, SSHD, SD card and etc. And it can work with Windows Server 2022/2019/2016/2012 (R2)/2008(R2)/2003.
Operability: It is with a concise and user-friendly interface so you can clone disks on Windows Server 2012 with much more ease.
Full-featured: It also supports you to clone only specific partition or clone OS related partitions. And it supports aligning SSD partitions to optimize its performance.
As mentioned above, the disk clone software AOMEI Partition Assistant Server can make things easier. Here you can follow the contents below to learn how to use it for Windows Server 2012 clone disk.
Before you do, here are some things you need to prepare:
1. A new hard drive to store data. You need to prepare an HDD or an SSD to clone Windows Server 2012 disk to. Connect it to your Server computer and make sure it can be detected.
2. Check out whether your Windows OS is 32-bit or 64-bit. This matters a lot if you are cloning MBR to GPT disk since 32-bit version of Windows can only boot from MBR disk. When necessary, you have to upgrade to 64-bit or convert the destination disk from GPT to MBR.
3. Determine the partition type of the destination disk and the boot mode (UEFI and Legacy) that the motherboard supports. Only when the motherboard supports EFI/UEFI, can you successfully boot from the cloned GPT disk afterward. If the motherboard only supports Legacy BIOS boot mode, you have to convert GPT to MBR beforehand.
4. If you want to clone a GPT hard drive to an MBR disk, the AOMEI Partition Assistant would change the fourth primary partition and later partition into logical partition while cloning if there are more than 4 primary partitions on the GPT disk.
5. Install this Server cloning software to your Windows Server 2012.
After those preparations, you can start to clone disk in Windows Server 2012.
Step 1. Run AOMEI Partition Assistant Server, right-click the source hard drive and click “Clone Disk”.
Step 2. It will pop up a second window that provides you two cloning method, Copy Disk Quickly and Sector-by-Sector Copy. Here we choose Clone Disk Quickly.
The differences between the two methods:
| Clone method | Clone Disk Quickly | Sector-by-Sector Clone |
| Clone scope | Clone only used space | Clone every sector |
| Capacity Requirement about Target Disk | Should not be smaller than the used space of source disk | Shall not be smaller than the capacity of source disk |
| Time spent | Less | More |
| Suitable conditions | Clone disk with bad sector | Clone disk with bad sector; clone BitLocker encrypted disk |
Step 3. Here you need to select the target disk, here is disk 2. if the disk is an SSD, you should check the box before “Optimize the performance of SSD”.
Step 4. AOMEI Partition Assistant Server also allows you to resize partition size on the destination disk (Sector-by-Sector Copy can’t do this job).
Step 5. Here is a note for how to boot from the cloned hard drive. Read it and click Finish.
Step 6. Here you will go back to the main interface, click Apply to launch the whole process.
What's the best Windows Server 2012 disk clone method? Different people clone disks for different purposes. This post has provided a powerful and versatile third-party disk cloner AOMEI Partition Assistant Server to help with disk clone. Moreover, besides the disk clone features, others including OS to SSD migration, hard drive wiping, and app moving are also supported.
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