After using the Windows 10 computer for a long time, you will find that it can no longer run smoothly, for example, the startup time is slower, the program’s loading time takes longer, the web page and working documents crashes from time to time, etc.
At this time, many users will purchase a larger drive and then clone the hard drive to a larger drive to get more capacity, thereby making your computer faster. Also, some wise users choose to clone the hard drive to SSD, which can greatly improve the comprehensive performance and extend the lifespan of an SSD disk.
Then, you may start the disk clone process, but you may encounter some annoying problems, for example, the cloned hard drive won’t boot or show the wrong size. How to solve this problem? You just need the best free AOMEI Backupper disk clone software – AOMEI Backupper Standard.
Best Free Disk cloning software for Windows 10
Here I’ll introduce you to AOMEI Backupper Standard, as one of the best free disk clone software for Windows 10, which can help you complete the cloning process excellently, even without any professional skill. It also can be used on Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1.
- It can ensure the cloned hard drive will boot successfully.
- You can clone hard drives of different sizes, not only from disk to large disk but also from larger HDD to smaller SSD.
- You can clone a hard drive with any partitioning style, for example, clone MBR disk to MBR disk.
- You can choose to clone all sectors of your disk with “Sector by sector clone”.
- The SSD disk can achieve its best performance with “SSD Alignment,” whether reading speed or writing speed. Also, lifespan has also improved.
In addition, its intuitive interface allows users to easily and quickly understand this software and use it to clone hard drives. Therefore, even a novice can operate like a professional.
How to easily clone hard drive to larger drive in Windows 10?
Preparations for hard drive clone:
- Prepare a target disk, either HDD or SSD. If it’s not initialized, please initialize the disk in the disk management.
- If the destination disk is a dynamic disk, you should convert the dynamic disk to a basic disk first.
- Download the Windows disk clone software – AOMEI Backupper Standard, and install it on your Windows 10 computer.
Things before clone:
- All data on the destination disk will be overwritten finally, so please backup important files in advance.
- If you want to clone a large HDD to a smaller SSD, you need to make sure that there is enough space to store everything on the old hard drive.
Now, let’s get started to clone hard drive with the best free disk cloning software for Windows 10.
Step 1. Connect the target disk via USB-to-SATA cable and confirm it can be detected.
Step 2. Launch this software and then click “Disk Clone” under the Clone tab.
Notes:
- The freeware only supports cloning hard drives with the same partition style, so you can only clone MBR disk to MBR disk or clone GPT disk to GPT disk. To clone MBR disk to GPT disk and vice versa, you may be asked to upgrade to AOMEI Backupper Professional, the advanced version of AOMEI Backupper Standard.
- To check out the partition style of your disk, you could go to disk management, right-click the hard disk, choose Properties -> Volume tab -> Partition Style, then you will see the partition style of the disk, either MBR or GPT.
Step 3. Select the current hard drive in Windows 10 and click Next.
Step 4. Select the new drive or SSD and click Next.
Step 5. Tick “SSD Alignment” if the target disk is a solid-state drive. Then, preview the summary of both disk and click “Start Clone” to perform a hard disk clone.
There are two more options next to “SSD Alignment”, namely “Sector by sector clone” and “Edit Partitions”.
- Sector by sector clone: No matter how many sectors are used or not, you can clone all sectors of the hard drive to another one.
- Edit Partitions: This feature is to solve the cloned hard drive that shows the wrong size by the “Add unused space to all partitions” or “Manually adjust partition size” option. However, it’s charged and available on AOMEI Backupper Professional at least.
The entire process will take a long while to complete and it depends on how much data you have. After that, you still need to check if the cloned hard drive or SSD can boot successfully, so you can use it to replace the hard drive in the event of a disaster.
To make it, you need to swap the hard drive and restart your computer, it will try to boot from the new one automatically. If not, please change the boot order in BIOS first and reboot again.
