Clone Disk Diskgenius

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Athina Dollison

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Aug 3, 2024, 4:13:59 PM8/3/24

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Disk cloning refers to copying all partitions and data from one disk to another. During disk copying process, DiskGenius creates partitions on destination disk first and then clones data for each partition. Partitions created on destination disk are identical to those on original disk. There are three disk cloning modes available:

Copy all sectors: Copy all sectors of the disk to destination disk without considering whether sectors are in use or not. This clone mode may copy a large amount of invalid data and takes longer time. However, it is the most complete copy method which can copy all the data of the source disk to the target disk.

Copy all valid sectors according to the layout of the file system: Copy all valid data of the source disk to corresponding partitions on the destination disk in line with the layout of the file system. Data structure on destination partition will be exactly the same as source partition. Cloning process gets rid of invalid sector, so it is quite fast.

Copy all files: Copy all the data of source disk to destination disk by analyzing file system layout of the source disk. When copying data, files will be rearranged according to file system layout. There won't be file fragments and it is very fast.

1. If the disk to be cloned contains partition whose file system is not supported by the application, it will be cloned via "Copy all sectors" in order to make sure the cloned disk is the same as the original disk.

2. Copy all sectors and Copy all valid sectors according to the layout of the file system require that the size of destination disk shouldn't be smaller than original disk; Copy all files allows to clone larger HDD to a smaller disk, but the capacity of destination disk shouldn't be smaller than the used space of source disk.

Hot Migration can complete the disk by way of taking snapshots, and it does not require to restart system even when cloning system disk. Lock and Execute means partitions on source disk will be locked temporarily and other programs cannot access them during disk cloning process.

Question: "I'm looking for a solution to clone a larger hard drive to a smaller SSD. The 1TB hard drive has around 200GB amount of data, and the SSD capacity is 512GB. There is no need to clone the OS, as I'd like to reinstall Windows 11 on another SSD. Is there any free disk cloning software that can clone HDD to smaller SSD?"

What does cloning a hard drive mean? Hard drive cloning means creating an exact copy of the hard drive or SSD, including all partitions and files. Disk cloning can be a useful method to upgrade a hard drive, create backups, transfer data, data recovery, etc. Here are the top reasons that you should consider cloning a hard drive.

Clear up unnecessary files on the source drive. The hard drive might contain many unnecessary or junk files, temporary data, rarely used programs, duplicate files, caches, corrupted files, etc. Free up drive space using Windows settings (Start > Settings > System > Storage > Cleanup recommendations) or third-party software such as CCleaner. The less files on the source drive, the shorter time will be taken by the disk cloning process.

Back up files stored on the target drive. If there are important files on the destination drive, be sure to back up them to another drive. This is because the disk cloning process will surely overwrite files on the target drive.

Make sure the target drive has enough space. It's okay that the target hard drive or SSD is smaller than the source drive, you just make sure it is large enough to store all data of the original drive. It'll be better if there can be extra free space on the target drive after the cloning, for this can guarantee drive performance to some extent.

Connect both old and new hard drives to the PC. You need to connect both drives to computer properly in advance. The target drive may use different connections, for example, it may needs M.2, SATA or SAS ports. If there are not proper adapters, you can connect the drive via a USB to SATA converter.

Install hard drive cloning freeware. The DiskGenius Free Edition is the very software we use to clone hard drive on Windows 11/10/8/7. You can use it clone hard drive to a larger or smaller HDD/SSD/USB, image hard drive, clone partition, back up any partition into an image file (incremental backup is supported), clone hard drive with bad sectors, migrate Windows OS to HDD/SSD/USB, clone SD cards, and more. When the computer is no longer bootable, DiskGenius Free can create a bootable USB drive with which you can boot into Windows PE and perform disk cloning. Meanwhile, DiskGenius is also an effective tool to recover lost data or partitions.

Hard drive cloning does not equal to system migration. Hard drive cloning and system migration have different requirements, for example, disk cloning does not necessarily to guarantee system is bootable on the target. Thus, if your aim is to replace the old system drive with a new one and make the new drive bootable, then go ahead with System Migration.

Double click the installer which is downloaded from the downloading page, and you can follow the installation wizard to install DiskGenius Free Edition on your computer. Once the installation finishes, it will launch the software automatically.

First, you can modify partition size of the target drive. It is possible that you are not satisfied with the existing partition size of the source drive, and thus you can resize them on the target drive: just drag the edge of partition to change the size.

Second, you can choose the disk cloning mode. When you clone a hard drive to a smaller hard drive or SSD, "Copy all files" is the only mode available. The other two disk cloning methods require the target disk shouldn't be smaller than the source disk. The "Copy all sectors" is the very cloning method that can clone all sectors including used and unused sectors.

How can I clone a corrupted, failing or unreadable hard drive? When a hard drive has bad sectors, it will become inaccessible. What can we do to rescue data? The first try can be hard drive data recovery. However, when hard drive recovery cannot be done due to bad sectors, you can try cloning the hard drive and then retrieving data from the target drive. The cloning process should be able to create a sector level cloning, skip bad sectors and retry cloning data from bad sectors. Here is a quick guide regarding cloning a hard drive with bad sectors:

You probably ask how much time it might take to clone a 500 GB hard drive or 2TB HDD. The time taken by disk cloning mainly counts on the source and target hard drive's read & write speed, the total amount of data to be cloned and the size of each file to be cloned. The hard drive speed differs from one to another, an SSD is faster than hard drive, and a hard drive may have 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM.

According to the screenshots in the tutorial above, the disk cloning speed might be around 7000MB/Min. So, cloning 2TB amount of data would take 4-5 hours approximately. If you have many small files on the source drive, the cloning speed won't be as fast as estimated. Moreover, if the source drive has bad sectors, the speed will be slow or even stop responding. No matter how long it takes, wait patiently for the clone to complete.

The only potential risk is on the target disk. If there are important files stored on the destination drive, the disk cloning process will remove and overwrite everything on the destination drive. Please make sure in advance that there is no important data on the target disk, or the data has been backed up to another location.

If you are cloning a hard disk to upgrade/replace a system hard disk, you need to select the correct disk cloning mode. For example, if you want the Windows operating system on the new hard disk to boot normally, you need to choose to clone the hard disk sector by sector or use the System Migration feature.

If there is a BitLocker encrypted partition on the original disk, in order to ensure that the partition can be cloned normally, it is recommended to unlock the BitLocker partition under the system in advance.

Whether you want to create backups or upgrade hard drive / SSD, the recommended way is to clone hard drive (or migrate OS to HDD/SSD) with free disk cloning software DiskGenius Free Edition. In addition to cloning hard drive, DiskGenius also allows you to image hard drive, clone partition, backup any partition into an image file, clone SD cards for Raspberry Pi, clone BitLocker drive, clone laptop HDD to an external hard drive, and more. Should you need any help regarding cloning hard drive or data backup, free feel to contact our support team who will provide you with free technical support.

Yes, it is safe to clone a hard drive even though Windows OS is installed on the hard drive. the hard drive cloning process is not risky, because the entire process is read-only to source data and hard drive. All you need to make sure is that the destination hard drive or SSD does not contain important files.

Yes, it is a nice try to clone an HDD to an SSD when you want to upgrade your computer with an SSD. By way of disk cloning, you won't have to reinstall Windows OS, set up configurations, and install third-party programs from scratch.

Hard drive cloning means an exact copy of the original hard drive, so the operating system will be cloned to the target disk if it exists on the original hard disk. However, if you want to make the OS of the destination disk bootable as before, cloning hard drive might not be enough, and system migration will be the better choice.

Cloning or copying a hard drive can bring about several benefits for example, you can create a complete backup, transfer data easily, migrate Windows OS to a new disk, and more. Thus, you can consider cloning a hard drive to either a smaller or lager hard disk or SSD whenever you want to create backups or upgrade computer with a new HDD/SSD.