How To Clone A Hard Drive In Windows

The reason most people clone a hard drive is if they’re upgrading from a Hard Drive to an SSD, or from a smaller drive to one with larger capacity. Some users also clone a drive to back up the contents onto an external hard drive.

For all such purposes, you can either use a Hard Drive Cloning Software – free or premium as you prefer – or a physical hard drive duplicator. We’ve listed the necessary steps for either method, on both Windows and Mac, in the article below.

Before You Start

You should back up any particularly important files before you start cloning since there’s a chance of data loss if anything goes wrong. To minimize this possibility, we recommend using some form of power backup such as an UPS so that your PC doesn’t abruptly shut down during the cloning process.

Also, here are some technical terms used in the guide below:
Source Drive: The drive that currently contains the data you’re trying to clone.
Destination Drive: The target drive that you’re trying to migrate the data to.

Table of Contents

How to Clone a Hard Drive on Windows

We’ve used Macrium Reflect, AOMEI Backupper, and AOMEI Partition Manager for this tutorial as these are the best free hard drive cloning tools available on Windows. But you can use your preferred software of choice. The steps will be similar for most of them.

Large to Smaller Hard Drive

Here are the steps to clone a larger hard drive onto a smaller one using Macrium Reflect:

Plug the hard drives into your PC.
Download, install and launch Macrium Reflect.
Select the source disk and click on Clone This Disk.
Select the disk to clone to.
Click on Select a different source disk or target disk if you want to change them. Once you’re happy with the selections, press Next to proceed.
You can set up a cloning schedule to backup the drive regularly on the next screen. We’ll ignore this, but you can use this feature if you want.
In the final screen, go through everything listed to make sure all the choices are correct, then press Finish.
Accept the confirmation prompts and wait for the process to complete.
Restart your PC and press the BIOS key to boot into the BIOS Setup Utility.
Under Boot Options, select the newly cloned drive as the first choice, and press F10 to proceed.

Small to Larger Hard Drive

Here are the steps to clone a smaller hard drive onto a larger one using the AOMEI tools:

Connect the hard drives to your PC.
Download and install AOMEI Back Upper and AOMEI Partition Manager.
Launch AOMEI Back Upper and select Clone > Disk Clone.
Select the source and destination disks and press Next on both screens.
Press OK > Start Clone, and once the process ends, press Finish.
Restart your PC and press the BIOS key to boot into the BIOS Setup Utility.
Under Boot Options, select the newly cloned drive as the first choice and press F10 to proceed.
When cloning a small drive to a larger one, the extra space will remain unallocated by default. To resolve this, launch AOMEI Partition Manager.
Right-click the active partition and select Merge Partitions.
Select the unallocated partition and press OK.
Press Proceed > Restart into Windows PE Mode > OK.
Once the process is complete, press Restart Now.

How to Clone a Hard Drive on Mac

Unlike Windows, you can clone a hard drive using the native Disk Utility on Mac. But SuperDuper is an excellent free option as well for cloning purposes.

Disk Utility

Here’s how to a clone a hard drive via the Disk Utility:

Plug the hard drives into your Mac and launch Disk Utility.
Note the source drive’s file system and check that it’s the same on the destination drive. If it’s not, format the destination drive with the same file system.
Restart your Mac and hold down Command + R until you boot into Recovery Mode.
Select Disk Utility and click Continue.
Select the destination drive and press Restore.
In the Restore from section, select the source drive and press Restore.
Once the restoration process is complete, press Done.
Click on the Apple icon and select Startup Disk.
Select the newly cloned hard drive and press Restart to boot from it.

SuperDuper

Here’s how to clone a hard drive using SuperDuper:

Once again, plug in the drives and ensure the destination drive is using the same file system as the source drive. If not, format the destination drive to make it so.
Download SuperDuper from the official site. Then, install and launch it.
In the copy section, select the source drive.
In the to section, select the destination drive.
In the using section, select Backup – all files.
If the amount of data on the source drive is more than what the target drive can store, the application will display a message about this. In this case, you should either delete some files to clear up space or use a larger capacity destination drive.
Otherwise, press Copy Now and accept the confirmation to proceed with the cloning.
Once the process is complete, press OK.
Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Startup Disk, select the cloned disk, and press Restart to boot from it.

How to Clone a Hard Drive Using a Duplicator

If you’d rather not go through the hassle of cloning a drive using third-party tools, a physical hard disk duplicator can be the perfect option for you. These typically cost between 20$ – 100$ and are extremely straightforward to operate. Just insert the source and destination drives into the respective slots and press the Clone button.

The one downside is that some cheaper models have a reputation of not working properly at times. So if you do choose to purchase a cloner/docking station, we recommend reading the reviews and making sure it’s reliable before getting it. For any further queries regarding your particular model, you should refer to the manual.