Easiest Way to Clone Hard Drive or SSD to External Hard Drive
Quick Navigation:
- Why clone hard drive to external hard drive?
- Best cloning software for hard drive migration
- Step by step guide: clone HDD or SSD to external drive in Windows 10 or 11
- Conclusion
Why clone hard drive to external hard drive?
Cloning hard drives, whether internal HDD or SSD, has become a common practice for Windows users worldwide. The primary reasons behind this trend include backing up important data for security, upgrading to a larger storage capacity, and transferring the operating system and programs to a new device, making it a convenient and essential process for millions of users.
- Duplicate a copy for data security. Cloning a hard drive involves creating an exact copy of your HDD or SSD, which can be used as a backup and allows direct access to data without needing a temporary storage space.
- Clone HDD or SSD to upgrade disk. Cloning a hard drive (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD) transfers all data, including the operating system, system files, drivers, installed programs, and personal data, to an external disk. This allows you to use the cloned disk as a system disk for increased capacity or performance, eliminating the need for a fresh installation.
- Replace the bad disk. If your internal disk is failing or has bad sectors, it's recommended to clone it to an external hard drive and switch to the new disk to ensure your computer remains bootable.
Best cloning software for hard drive migration
Windows doesn't have a built-in cloning feature, so we need third-party software. Qiling Disk Master Professional is a tool that allows users to clone hard drives to external devices like HDDs, SSDs, and USB flash drives in a few clicks.
✧ Qiling Disk Master allows users to clone a smaller hard drive to a larger drive, freeing up space, or clone a larger HDD to a smaller SSD, effectively upgrading their storage capacity.Intelligent Clone feature to enjoy the high performance of SSD disk.
✧It offers the Sector by Sector Clone A function is available to help make an exact copy of the source disk, including blank or logically bad sectors that will be cloned.
✧It provides you with the "SSD AlignmentWhen cloning your HDD to an external SSD drive, consider using the "option to optimize your SSD performance during the cloning process". This feature can be particularly useful in ensuring that your SSD runs at its best, especially if you're upgrading from a traditional HDD.
✧Its "Edit PartitionsThe feature allows manual or automatic adjustment of unallocated space and converts the destination disk from MBR to GPT or vice versa.
Qiling Disk Master is a free download, and it doesn't have ads, making it a great option to try out now.
Step by step guide: clone HDD or SSD to external drive in Windows 10 or 11
In this part, I will show you how to clone HDD or SSD to external drive as an example to teach you how to use this cloning software. Before cloning, get the following prepared:
1️⃣ External drive A portable external drive, like a larger or smaller HDD, SSD, USB external disk, etc. Be sure its capacity is enough to save data on your original HDD or SSD, or the cloning process will fail.
2️⃣ If your computer only has one USB slot, you can use a USB to SATA adapter to connect your external hard drive, or if it has two slots, you can directly slide your external disk into one of the slots and screw it tightly.
3️⃣ Initialize the external drive in Disk Management. Right-click it and select Initialize Disk. Then, select MBR or GPT and click OK. Note the partition style needs to be the same as your original disk.
Here are simple steps to check the disk partition style:
- To access disk management, press Win + R to open the Run window, type diskmgmt.msc, and then hit OK. This will open the disk management window.
- Then, right-Click the disk you want to clone and select Properties in the pop-up window.
- In the Properties window, select the Volume tab and confirm the partition style, which can be MBR (Master Boot Record) or GPT (GUID Partition Table).
4️⃣ Before cloning, make sure to backup any important data from the external hard drive to another location, such as an external drive or cloud storage. This will prevent any loss of data in case the cloning process overwrites the target drive.
To clone an internal HDD or SSD to an external drive, you'll need to follow a few steps. First, connect the external drive to your computer and ensure it's formatted to the same file system as your internal drive (e.
Step 1. Launch the hard drive cloning software Qiling Disk Master, and you will see its deep-blue screen. Click on Clone and then select Disk Clone from the options that follow.
Step 2. Select the original HDD or SSD on your computer as the source disk, then click Next.
Step 3. Select the prepared external drive as the destination disk, which can also be an SSD, USB external disk, flash drive, etc. Click Next.
Step 4. Check the operation summary and click Proceed to clone hard drive to external hard drive in Windows 10 or 11.
If you're cloning a large external hard drive, you'll need to resize the partitions on the destination disk to match the size of the original drive. You can do this by clicking "Edit Partitions" and choosing "Add unused space to all partitions" or "Manually adjust partition size" to ensure the cloned drive shows the correct size in Windows Explorer.
This software supports converting disk types (MBR or GPT) to prevent boot failure and also has an option to check the SSD Alignment box to improve SSD performance.
Step 5. Once the cloning process reaches 100%, click "Finish" and replace your old hard drive with the cloned external drive. Boot your computer from the cloned drive to ensure it's bootable. If both disks are connected, change the BIOS boot sequence to prioritize the external drive.
- The Sector by sector clone box should be checked to clone every sector on the hard drive. The target disk must be larger than or equal to the source disk, or the Proceed button will be greyed out.
- If you want to migrate your operating system to an SSD, try using the System Clone feature.
- Cloning Windows 10 to an NVMe SSD can provide the best performance, as NVMe SSDs have the fastest transfer speeds among SSDs.
The cloning process time can vary depending on the drive size and data volume. Larger drives with more data may take longer to clone.
Conclusion
You can easily clone a hard drive or SSD to an external drive using Qiling Disk Master Professional, a powerful cloning software. This software also allows you to move a hard drive to a new computer running Windows 11 and boot successfully, making it a convenient tool for backing up, upgrading, or replacing disks.
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