When is disk cloning necessary? For instance, one has to install the OS and lots of software of the same configuration to multiple PCs, or provide further maintenance of such setup.

The latter ones also may be OS-specific, file system-specific, the ones to install or portable. These include both universal (any HDD, SSD) and specific, for example for certain brand drives, say Samsung or Western Digital. To do this, there are dozens of paid and free programs, aka disk cloning software, aka clone hard drive software, aka disk imaging software. The result is an exact copy of the original disk. That’s just the way it is, and there’s no need to dig into the semantics of it.īasically, hard disk cloning is a sector-by-sector transfer of data from one medium to another. As you’ve noticed, copying the contents of a computer drive is referred to as “cloning”. (You'll probably only need to do this if you're migrating from a hard drive to a smaller SSD we have a separate guide on that process here.People often ask the same question in a variety of ways: how to copy a hard drive, how to clone one hard drive to another, how to clone a hard drive to SSD, how to clone disk in Windows 7 / 10, etc. If it isn't, you'll need to free up space on your source drive and shrink the main partition down to fit.

In most cases, your destination drive will probably need to be as large as, or larger than, your source drive. Once you've connected your drive, you can go through the cloning process, then disconnect it and install the drive internally.

If, however, you're using a laptop with only one drive bay, you'll need an external SATA-to-USB adapter, dock (Opens in a new window), or enclosure to connect your bare drive to the computer. If you have a desktop computer and both drives are installed internally (or you're just cloning to a USB external drive for backup), great! You're ready to continue.

How to Set Up Two-Factor Authenticationįor this process, you'll obviously need two drives: the source drive (with the data you want to clone), and the destination drive (where you're cloning that data to).

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