by Need to Copy All Partitions to SSD
Nowadays, with the development of hardware technology, the price of SSD become cheaper and cheaper. Some users pursue high performance and fast speed of computer experience, so they plan to upgrade from their traditional HDD to SSD. However, upgrade is not an easy clone process, from forum, we know many people can’t boot their Windows system after transferring data from old hard disk to the new SDD. Why? The most reason is they did not copy some boot related partitions to the SSD. So, is there an simple way to clone all drives to the SSD including boot related drives and data drives? Yes, to achieve this goal, thanks to the development of software technology, there are many reliable cloning tools to help you in the market.
Wait a minute, we think it’s necessary to share you some knowledge about partitions. Now that you know to replace the entire hard disk with a new SSD, you need to clone disk including all partitions to target disk. You should know what partitions make up the boot hard drive first.
For desktop machines, usually more than one disks may be installed, the partition structure for system disk would be only hidden boot related drives and C drive, and maybe some favorite folders. A large amount of desktops’users will store personal data on the second disk to prevent data losing from system disasters and other errors.
For laptops, usually there is only one disk so that all partitions are on the it. The partition structure would be hidden boot related drives (system reserved partition or UEFI drive), partition: C (system drive), and D:, E:, F: drive etc(for installed apps and save personal files).
Copy Whole Hard Disk Including Partitions to SSD
Then, to do a complete and successful disk or partition cloning, we would like to recommend you a powerful and easy-to-use Windows optimize software. AOMEI Backupper is a professional disk cloning program that allows you to clone all partitions to SSD or another HDD and ensures successful boot after cloning. It offers two different cloning methods to assist you clone hard drive to SSD with bigger or smaller sizes. AOMEI Backupper has great compatibility, that it supports all Windows operating systems, it editions cover PC as well as Windows Server.
When you want to clone all partitions from a larger hard disk to smaller SSD, you can choose Intelligent Clone, which will clone only used space from the source to the target as long as the target can accommodate the used volume.If you want to clone all partitions from smaller drive to larger SSD, you can fit all partitions to the disk to avoid un-allocated space after cloning.
Another copying way is Sector-by-Sector Clone. This feature will clone every sector of the source disk to the target disk, whether it is used or not. It requires the target must equal or larger than the source disk. What’s more, it is also a method to recover format or deleted files that haven’t been overwritten yet.
Steps of using AOMEI Backupper
Preparations: Connect the SSD and computer. On laptops, maybe you need a SATA-to-USB cable to make things easier. Make sure the SSD can be detected by system. Download and install AOMEI Backupper, run it.
In AOMEI Backupper, switch to Clone tab and select Disk Clone.
Select the current hard disk(Disk0) as the source path, click Next.
Select the connected SSD as the destination location.
Click Next and go to following the summary window, tick the option “Align partition to optimize for SSD” to improve SSD performance. You can also edit partition size if you want to. Note that checking “Sector-by-sector clone” method will make partition editing unavailable. At last, click Start Clone to commit the task. Waiting for it to be finished. Restart computer, to set boot order in BIOS then you can enjoy booting from the replaced and cloned SSD drive.
Verdict
AOMEI Backupper’ copying functions also supports migrating OS to SSD, that means, only system partition and related boot partitions, if you SSD is smaller, you can try this one. Except clone functions, AOMEI Backupper as a backup software of course supports backup&restore. You can even try backup method to realize your goal, in short, backing up disk and storing to a place where you can access later, then restore the image to SSD, because AOMEI Backupper supports universal restore and restore from bootable media. All in all, AOMEI Backupper does a great job in cloning data and protecting data, and it integrates a series of built-in utilities to optimize your computer. Don’t hesitate to get it.
