How To Clone A Hard Drive To SSD

Cloning a tough drive is one of the simplest ways to switch the total contents of 1 arduous drive to an SSD, particularly if the drive incorporates the working system.

It is especially helpful when upgrading your laptop with SSD.

It is feasible to make use of a arduous disk duplicator or perhaps a easy command– dd on Linux. However, in case you don’t have entry to such a tool or working system, your solely possibility is to depend on third-party cloning software program.

Many free and open-source purposes are additionally accessible on the web for this objective. You can use any utility you need after verifying its reliability and checking consumer opinions. 

Here, I’ll be using an open-source utility, Clonezilla Live USB to indicate you the steps of the cloning course of.

Prepare and Check Storage Drives

Trying to clone your arduous drive to a corrupt SSD or one with a smaller dimension might abruptly cease the method. So, it’s best to verify each the arduous disk and the SSD earlier than beginning the cloning course of.

Here is the record of some different issues that you simply want to bear in mind,

• Make positive that the SSD drive that you’re cloning to, has the identical or greater capability than the unique arduous drive. Most purposes received’t permit cloning to a smaller drive.
• Back up all essential information from the SSD. The cloning course of will re-write the whole contents of the drive.
• Before continuing with the cloning, verify the well being of the SSD and the arduous drive and ensure they’re functioning correctly.
• If you want to clone an encrypted drive, be sure that the software program you might be selecting can clone that drive.
• Make positive to attach each HDD and SSD into your laptop. You may also use USB adapters to attach one or each of the gadgets.

Download and Prepare Clonezilla Live USB

If you wish to use every other utility moderately than Clonezilla, be sure to obtain it from its official web site or supply.

Also, learn the directions fastidiously on how to obtain and run it primarily based in your system.

For Clonezilla, the method is to arrange a reside USB and clone the arduous disk from an offline setting. To put together the reside USB flash drive,

1. Go to the official Clonezilla obtain webpage. Click on the Debian or Ubuntu-based secure model. I used the Debian model for this information.
2. Set CPU structure to amd64 and file kind to zip. Click Download.
3. Insert a USB flash drive into your PC and format it to a FAT32 file system. Make positive to back up all vital information beforehand.
4. Extract all of the contents of the ZIP file you downloaded into the USB flash drive.

Boot Using Clonezilla Live USB

After getting ready the reside USB, boot into this USB to run the Clonezilla utility. The easiest method is to change the boot precedence possibility on the BIOS. But you can too use different strategies if you need.

1. Restart your PC and get inside its BIOS with out eradicating the USB flash drive.
2. Change the boot precedence order to set the USB drive containing Clonezilla reside as the very best precedence boot device.
3. Save the modifications and exit the BIOS.
4. After booting into the USB drive, choose Clonezilla reside (default possibility).

Carry Out the Cloning Process

Then, choose the correct choices to clone one native disk drive to a different on the Clonezilla interface.

Make positive to learn the directions on the display screen whereas following the steps under:

1. Pick your language and keyboard preferences.
2. Highlight Start_Clonezilla and press Enter.
3. Choose device-device and press Enter.
4. Select Beginner mode.
5. Then, choose disk_to_local_disk.
6. Pick the arduous drive because the supply disk. It will often be sda or sdb. Check the title as nicely.
7. Then, choose the SSD because the goal disk.
8. Select -sfsck, -k0 after which -p on the three successive tabs.
9. Follow the on-screen prompts, the place you want to press Enter or kind y and press Enter.
10. Wait for the cloning course of to finish.