- #HOW TO CLONE HARD DRIVE TO SSD OF EQUAL SIZE HOW TO#
- #HOW TO CLONE HARD DRIVE TO SSD OF EQUAL SIZE INSTALL#
- #HOW TO CLONE HARD DRIVE TO SSD OF EQUAL SIZE DRIVERS#
Once you've acquired the drive, you can either install it as a second drive or purchase a compatible drive enclosure for it. You have to real options: A bare hard drive, or an external drive.Ī bare drive is exactly like the drive you already have in your laptop or desktop-it's the actual drive, but not yet installed in a machine. When backing up an entire drive, you'll want to have a drive of equal or larger capacity set aside for backup, and nothing else. While many find it worthwhile to pay for the convenience and ease of use offered by a for-purchase program, there are a few popular free alternatives that may do the job just as well, such as Macrium Reflect Free, ShadowCopy, Clonezilla, and EaseUS Todo Backup Free.Ĭloning a drive, or even saving a backup image, requires having someplace to save your data to. It can do just about anything, but you should need to read a downloadable manual to use some of its features. It's an amazingly thorough and powerful backup application, more suitable to expert IT managers than for small businesses or consumers. Among the many backup utilities we've reviewed, our top pick is Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.5.
#HOW TO CLONE HARD DRIVE TO SSD OF EQUAL SIZE HOW TO#
For an explanation of how to create and use a disk image, see " The Beginner's Guide to PC Backup".įor those who want to clone their drive directly, there are several tools available.
The downside, however, is that the image isn't immediately functional. You can actually back up more than one image, letting you save the entirety of your drive multiple times and different points in time, and save them locally (to a backup partition) or onto a separate drive. It's sort of like copying your entire drive to a big. The second option is to create a disk image, which is a snapshot of the drive data it still creates a complete copy of the drive contents, but it does so in a single compressed file. The downside to this, however, is that a direct bit-for-bit clone will usually be the only thing on the backup drive.
#HOW TO CLONE HARD DRIVE TO SSD OF EQUAL SIZE DRIVERS#
You can also use the cloned drive in another PC, and aside from some potential missing drivers due to hardware differences, it should work just like your old system, making it an ideal backup in the event of a damaged PC. Swap the old drive out for a freshly made clone and there should be no functional difference. From the operating system to the hidden directory files, from your desktop to the device drivers, everything is copied identically.
And unlike some backup strategies, which require regular attention or convoluted tools, cloning a drive is a relatively uncomplicated affair.Ī clone is a direct copy, bit for bit, so that the data stored on the cloned drive is identical to the data on the original drive. If you need to copy all of your data, or want to safeguard against a corrupted or physically damaged hard drive, having a functional copy of the drive you can immediately turn to is hard to beat. Few, however, are as simple and straightforward as simply cloning your hard drive.