Upgrading a drive on your PC is generally not that difficult, but it can be tricky to move over the data, and more importantly, the operating system, to the new drive. It’s recommended that you install the operating system afresh on the new SSD or HDD you’ve bought. However, that’s not always the convenient way to go about it.
Want to clone your existing drive to the new one instead? The hard drive cloning process isn’t too complicated, provided you know what steps to follow. Here’s what you need to know about disk cloning and how to clone a hard drive.
Getting ready to clone a hard drive
There are a few good reasons you’ll want to create a disk image of an existing drive. You may have an aging hard-disk drive that you want to replace with a solid-state drive, or maybe you want to upgrade for more storage space. Whatever the reason, you’ll need two drives: the drive you want to clone and the new destination drive, and both will need to be connected to the same computer.
If you’re trying to upgrade a PC’s internal drive, you have two options for connecting the destination drive. If you have a spare slot or drive bay in your computer, you can simply install the new target disk alongside the existing drive. If you don’t have a spare slot, you can connect the destination disk via a USB enclosure. These enclosures let you connect an NVMe SSD, SATA SSD or HDD to your PC with a USB cable, essentially acting like an external storage device. You can then remove it from the enclosure and install it in your computer.
Another thing to consider is the storage capacity of the two drives. The cloned drive will need at least as much space as the primary drive. So if the drive you’re trying to clone is a 2-terabyte disk, the cloned disk will need to have a capacity (or free space) of 2TB or greater. You can technically clone a larger drive onto a smaller drive if the used disk capacity is lower, but you’ll have to shrink the storage partitions of the larger driver small enough to fit on the new target drive. The cloning software mentioned in the next section can help you do that.
Once you’ve got the two drives connected to your computer, you’ll need a disk-cloning utility to make an exact copy of your hard drive. For the purposes of this guide, I cloned the internal SSD of a Windows PC and a MacBook to an external drive, which is a Crucial P310 2280 NVMe SSD installed in a ZikeDrive enclosure.
How to clone a hard drive on Windows
There are a few utilities that will let you clone a hard drive on Windows, but many are paid apps with a free trial. EaseUS Disk Copy is a good example of a disk management and cloning utility for Windows. However, our recommendation is DiskGenius, which is a lightweight utility that will let you clone a hard drive the regular way, as well as a dedicated option to move operating systems to a new drive.
To clone a disk in DiskGenius on Windows, follow these steps:
- Download and install DiskGenius from the official website, and run it.
- On the DiskGenius menu bar, click Tools, and click Clone Disk.
- In the pop-up window, select your source disk from the options, and click OK.
- DiskGenius will show you a prompt asking whether you’re migrating your system and want to make it bootable. Click No.
- In the new pop-up window, select the target SSD or HDD and click OK.
- Click Start to start cloning your hard drive.
To clone an OS installation using DiskGenius, follow these steps:
- Download DiskGenius from the official website. Run the app once installed.
- On the DiskGenius menu bar, click Tools, and click System Migration. Alternatively, you can also click the OS Migration icon on the secondary menu bar.
- In the pop-up window, select your target disk from the options, and click OK. DiskGenius automatically detects your source drive by checking for the installed OS.
- DiskGenius will show you a warning about your data on the destination drive being erased. Click OK.
- In the new window, select the target SSD or HDD and click OK.
- Click Start to start moving your OS installation.
How to clone a hard drive on Mac
Cloning a hard drive on a Mac is a different process. If you have a newer MacBook or iMac, you can’t swap out the hard disk on it. The Apple Silicon-based Macs have the storage soldered in, so there’s no easy way to upgrade it.
There are two approaches to take here. One is to clone a drive with a third-party utility, and the other is to use MacOS’ Time Machine feature to create a backup of your files that you can use to restore your system in case of data loss. In either case, it’s ideal to make sure your secondary disk is formatted in APFS before you begin.
You can do it via Disk Utility on MacOS. Just select the drive, click Erase, select APFS as the format and click Erase again.
To clone your Mac hard drive to a secondary drive, we recommend using SuperDuper. It’s a simple utility that will copy the entire drive, including your data, installed programs and boot sectors, onto your target drive. It’s available as a paid program and has a free trial.
Follow the steps below to set up Time Machine on Mac:
- Download and install SuperDuper from the official website, by clicking the Download button under Download now, and run it.
- Give the app full disk access by following the Settings app prompt by clicking the Open Security & Privacy button, clicking the plus (+) sign, selecting SuperDuper, and clicking Open.
- Click the Quit & Reopen button to relaunch SuperDuper with the new permissions.
- In the SuperDuper window, click the drop-down menu next to Copy to select the disk you want to clone.
- Click the second drop-down menu to select the target disk.
- Ensure the drop-down menu next to using says “Backup – all files.“
- Click Copy Now to start the cloning process.
You can use the Time Machine feature to create a backup of your Mac’s hard drive. If you just need to move your MacOS installation, using Time Machine is the way to go, instead of cloning your MacOS hard drive. Time Machine also needs your backup drive formatted in the APFS format. Follow these steps to set up Time Machine:
- Open Time Machine from the Launchpad by searching for it among the listed applications under the Utilities folder.
- Once opened, you’ll get a setup prompt. Click Set Up Time Machine. This option can also be found in the Settings app under the General tab.
- Click Add Backup Disk… to begin the process.
- Click the disk you want to back up to, and click Set Up Disk….
- In the configuration window, select your preferred options for encryption, password, hint and disk usage limit, if any. When ready, click Done.
Time Machine will set up your disk after a one-minute gap, and show you the progress in the Settings app Time Machine window. You’ll get a notification once the disk is ready to use. Note that Time Machine makes regular copies to your disk, so if you want an updated backup, it’s ideal to connect the drive to your Mac and back it up every now and then.
Once you’ve cloned your disk, you’ll need to swap it. If you’ve cloned it to replace a primary drive that runs the OS, it’s best to try booting off of the drive before you swap it. You can do that via the boot menu in Windows or the Startup Manager on a Mac.
If you want to clone a drive but aren’t sure which drive to get for the process, you can check our recommendations for the best external hard drives and SSDs. Alternatively, if you’ve got an aging computer that you’re considering replacing, check out our top picks for the best MacBook and best laptop to get right now.
