This is the transfer of all data from the old drive ("donor") to a new one ("recipient"). Everything is copied without exception: the operating system with drivers, installed programs, photo, music and so on. After cloning and replacing the disk, you do not need to remember passwords, all files will be in their usual places.

Why clone a hard drive?

This operation is carried out for the following purposes:

1. To use a new and faster drive. A typical case is replacing a slow HDD with a modern SSD. This will significantly speed up the responsiveness of Windows, and due to cloning, the upgrade of the computer will be as comfortable as possible for the user. All shortcuts and settings will remain unchanged, but the system will become faster.
2. Not to reinstall operating system. For example, after buying a new computer, you want everything to be like on the old one and without reinstallations. This will happen when information is transferred from the "donor" to the "recipient", and the procedure itself will require relatively little action and attention from the user.
3. To synchronize work for different computers. Becomes more and more common distant work. Cloning a hard drive will allow you to deploy a full-fledged workplace where it is convenient and there can be as many such places as you like.
4. To backup your data. You can lose information on the drive at any time - nothing lasts forever. Thanks to cloning in a few clicks, you can also be safe in case of force majeure to have a fully working "cast" of all data.

It is important that the "donor" does not have viruses - clone the drive only after a thorough check for malware.

Utilities and programs for cloning

There are many cloning applications. Some, specially designed to perform such an operation, are suitable for inexperienced users who value the simplicity of the process. Other programs have wider functionality. In them, creating a disk clone is just one of the many options available.

Connect your new drive to your computer before using any application. To do this, it is convenient to use an external hard drive pocket.

Renee Becca

A simple utility that everyone will understand. With its help, you can clone a storage medium in a few clicks. The algorithm of actions consists of the following steps:

• download, install and run the application;
• select in the left pane "Clone". With Renee Becca, you can also clone only certain local drives or transfer only the operating system to a new drive. The corresponding items are located below in the initial window of the program;

• indicate "donor" and "recipient". To get a complete copy of the "donor", check the box "Make target disk bootable ..." at the bottom of the window. On the left, expand the "More" list and check the box next to "Clone of all sectors ...". Then start the operation by clicking on "Clone";

A functional program that costs a lot, but a demo version is also suitable for cloning. To download it, follow the link and enter your e-mail. After launching the application, do the following:

• select "donor". It is important to specify not just a local drive, but the entire drive. To do this, click right click mouse on the line with this drive and click on "Clone basic disk";

• specify "recipient". When choosing this disk, remember that the data on it will be overwritten, and its volume cannot be less than the size of the occupied information on the "donor";

• so that the "recipient" is exactly the same as the "donor", check the box next to the "One to One" line in the next window;

• in Acronis Disc Director, any manipulations with drives must always be confirmed separately. To do this, at the top of the window, click on "Apply pending operations" - only after that the cloning will begin;

If you do not use the program for commercial purposes, then you do not need to pay for it. You just need to go to the developer's website, click on "Home Use", specify an e-mail and confirm it - you will receive a corresponding letter. After downloading, installing and running Macrium Reflect, follow these steps:

• on the home screen, click on "Clone this disk";

• on the next window, tick all local drives on the "donor";

• at the bottom, click on "Select a disk to clone ..." - a selection window will appear, where specify the "donor";

• at the end of the operation, click on "Finish";

Paragon Drive Backup Personal

A free utility, the capabilities of which are enough for cloning. It is available for download on this page, and after downloading, installing and running, do the following:

• create your own account in the app. This is done in a few clicks - you only need to specify your e-mail and personal data. After that, on the left, click on "My new backup". On the right, specify "donor" in the "Backup source" field and "recipient" in the "Destination" field;

• start cloning by clicking on "Back up now";

Simple and demon paid app. To download, go to the developer's website and select the version with Russian localization.

After installation and launch, follow these steps in sequence:

• indicate "donor". If you need to clone not the entire drive, but only one of the local drives, then check the box "Show partitions" and select the required local drives. Then click on "Next";

• Specify the "recipient" and click on "Next" again.

• the settings window will appear. You can not change anything and click on "Next";

• a window for setting the sizes of the "donor" and "receiver" will appear. It is enough to tick the option "Resize partitions proportionally" and click on "Next";

• in the last window, confirm the start of the operation by clicking on "Start copying".

A good utility that has a demo version, the capabilities of which are enough for a one-time disk cloning. After downloading, installing and running the application, follow these steps:

• in top panel click on "Clone" - unfortunately, the program does not have a translation into Russian;

In this article, we will look at programs that will help you quickly clone (copy) a hard drive to another hard drive. Such knowledge will be useful to any owner of a computer or laptop.

Upgrading a computer or laptop often involves replacing the hard drive with a more capacious and faster one. At the same time, users are faced with the problem of transferring information from the installed media to a new one, because in order to reinstall the system, drivers and desired applications, you have to spend a lot of time.

It is much easier in this situation to carry out full or partial cloning of an HDD or SSD using one of the specialized programs. Setting up and working with them do not require special knowledge, and the time spent on the cloning process is an order of magnitude less than on installing the OS and setting up.

Copying a hard drive in Acronis True Image

One of the functions of this useful program- disk cloning, which, by the way, can be configured very finely depending on the tasks of a particular user. To avoid possible errors during the operation, no need to use Acronis true image from under a running OS - it is recommended to run the application using a boot disk. Therefore, you will need the Acronis BootCD/DVD distribution kit, which will need to be unpacked to DVD or even to a flash drive, for example, using UltraISO, UNetbootin, etc.

After creating bootable media, you can proceed directly to cloning:

1. Boot from the created help from Acronis BootCD/DVD drive.
2. In the Acronis main window, open the Tools and Utilities section.

   

3. On the right in the list of utilities, go to "Disk Cloning" and select auto mode carrying out the process. Click next.
4. Left-click to select the source disk with the copied information, click "Next".

   

5. In the next window, select the target drive where you plan to clone the old HDD. The target drive can be either an HDD or a high-speed modern SSD.

   

If you are copying to a solid state drive, then the usual situation will be when its capacity is less connected HDD. In this case, Acronis True Image will display a message about the need to exclude certain files and folders from the cloning process.

Usually, only the system is transferred to the SSD, so only the main disk partition (usually “C”) can be allocated for exact copying, excluding partitions or individual files with unnecessary information from the process. If the volume of the disk allows cloning old drive completely, you can click "Next", after which the process of sector-by-sector low-level copying of the disk will start.

Note that the application is paid, but it is multifunctional, very fast and, as shown, has the ability to select data on the hard drive for transfer.

Using the Paragon Hard Disk Manager App

This multifunctional application is only slightly inferior in popularity to the program described above. It is also convenient to use it to clone information on drives:

Like Acronis True Image, this application for reliable sector-by-sector data copying is better to run not from under Windows, but from a boot drive. You can create it in the program itself, using a special rescue media creation wizard:

Note that Paragon Hard Disk Manager is also a paid application, but its functionality is no less than that of Acronis True Image. Both of them work with any disks and file systems, support Windows 8.1 and 10.

Disk cloning using EASEUS Disk Copy

This small application, unlike those discussed earlier, is completely free, but nevertheless allows you to reliably clone sector-by-sector hard drives, their individual partitions and migrate the OS to various drives, including solid-state SSDs. The program is launched from a bootable DVD or flash drive, for which you need to download a free distribution kit for installation on the official website of the utility. After running the executable setup file, the wizard will offer a choice:

• install EASEUS Disk Copy on a USB flash drive,
• to the optical drive
• export the ISO image of the utility to a computer disk.

A simple and quick option is to create bootable flash drive, i.e. the first one in the list.

In the next window, specify the disk to be copied and the drive to which information will be transferred sector-by-sector. A certain drawback of the application is the lack of Russian localization.

After cloning a Windows 10 boot disk, sometimes the system may not boot. In this case:

If you get a File: \Boot\BCD error after booting, repair Windows bootloader.

Cloning Disks with Macrium Reflect

This is another small utility distributed free of charge. Its functionality includes cloning HDD and SSD, creating them complete images, as well as images of individual partitions that can be used in the OS as virtual media. The installer can be obtained from application website, when you start it, you need to specify the installation directory and select the "Free" license.

When you first start Macrium Reflect, it will prompt you to create boot disk, with which one should agree, since when working in an environment windows cloning may be accompanied by errors. After starting the program:

1. In the main window, select the drive to be cloned.
2. Under the selected drive, click on the link "Clone this disk" and in the next window select the drive to which you want to transfer the information.

Using the Farstone RestoreIT Pro Utility

This paid application is used to create backups of any information on disks, saving the current state of the system, and in case of unforeseen failures, restoring it literally by pressing a single button.

The mechanism of work is that it overwrites boot sector disk, adding itself to it, and also creates an additional logical disk to record all the backed up information. In fact, Farstone RestoreIT Pro creates system restore points, and it can be used to roll back to the previous state not only the entire disk, but also individual partitions.

You can activate and deactivate the application in context menu, the latter is opened by clicking on the tray icon. This feature allows you to save system resources when you are sure that its state is in this moment does not change. Farstone RestoreIT Pro can create bootable CD / DVD or even floppy disks, with which you can not only restore the disk if it cannot boot normally, but also the main boot record MBR with partition table.

How to quickly copy a hard drive to another hard drive (HDD/SSD)

5 (100%) 6 votes.

Creating an exact copy of the disk will help you out in the event of an unexpected failure, as a result of which the media refuses to work correctly. Such unpleasant situations can be: the disk is no longer detected in the system, the integrity of the files on the disk is violated, the partition has the wrong size as a result of actions malware viruses, bad sectors appeared, the disk controller stopped working. In the event that the disk on which the operating system is installed fails, the system may "fail" or not start at all. When such situations arise with disks, it is good to have a sector-by-sector copy of the disk from which you can quickly restore everything. HDClone Free Edition is free program for cloning partitions and disks supporting IDE/ATA/SATA/SATA2 interfaces with any file layout.

Make a hard drive clone

The HDClone Free Edition utility can make an accurate "cast" of a hard drive or logical disk, copying information literally by sectors. The result is an accurate disk image with all the data. Having such a clone of the disk and faced with the incorrect functioning of the drive, the user will quickly be able to restore the working mood of the hard disk by restoring from backup disk image as it was in a healthy state at the time of cloning. With HDClone Free Edition you can create a bootable floppy or bootable CD/DVD, for example for emergency boot. In addition to creating disk images, the program can determine the speed of linear disk reading and reading from the disk cache, as well as display the contents of disk sectors for viewing.

Screenshots of HDClone Free Edition

Often, when using a computer, it becomes necessary to transfer all data from the hard drive to a new hard drive. This operation is necessary when there is not enough space on the hard disk or you want to save all the data from your computer before repairing or selling it. First of all, you need to purchase a new hard drive with a larger capacity to be sure that you can clone the system to it.

If your computer does not have a special bay to install another hard drive there, you can mount it for a while instead of a CD drive, or use USB port 2.0 for external target disk. Otherwise, you will have to clone the hard drive by creating an image and restoring it to a new hard drive that has larger partitions. It is convenient to transfer data from a hard drive to a new hard drive using Acronis True Image, which is rightfully considered one of the most powerful cloning tools. hard drives or their sections. She can copy all the data, including operating systems and applications, which will be instantly restored and will be able to work flawlessly on another computer in Windows even without rebooting.

After installing Acronis True Image on your computer, go to the "Tools and Utilities" section in the main menu, open the tab in the new window and click "Clone Disk". Then you can choose automatic or manual mode for transferring data to a new disk. At automatic way all data from the disk will be transferred to the new hard disk, and it will become bootable, provided that the original disk was also bootable. Manual mode is used if it is necessary to make changes to the partition structure. The program will independently determine which of the disks is the source and which is the target. If multiple disks are found, you must specify which disk to clone. After selecting the source disk, you should click the "Next" button and specify the disk to which all data will be transferred, and the source disk will be displayed in a lighter font and become unavailable for selection. By pressing the "Next" button, a check of the target disk and its partitions is launched to make sure that it is free for data transfer. You must click "OK" to start deleting partitions, and the program will prepare for cloning, the main changes will come if you click the "Proceed" button. If there are no partitions on the disk, the program will immediately recognize it as the target, and this step will be automatically skipped.

The final cloning window will show the structure of the disk, if everything suits you, you must click the "Proceed" button, after which you will be prompted to restart the computer. After the cloning is completed, the computer can be turned off by pressing any button in order to change the slave/master switches, one of the hard drives can be removed. If the disk does not contain an operating system or it is not loaded at the time of cloning, then the process occurs without rebooting.

It is worth remembering that before cloning a hard drive, it is worth checking it with special tools to identify and fix errors. If you do everything simple instructions, the new hard disk will retain an exact copy of the original disk and can be used as a replacement for the old one or as an additional medium.

Many users quite often need to create copies of hard drives with the information stored on them in case of system recovery or lost information. The process referred to as "disk cloning" can be carried out in several ways, depending on what information needs to be stored and what actions are supposed to be performed in the future. Creating copies of optical media will not be considered below, and we will focus on creating copies of hard drives.

General principles for making copies

Before starting to consider what disk cloning is, you need to initially define a few basic concepts for yourself. Copies can be made using two main methods: full copy and partial. Since at the moment we are interested in questions of exceptions, we will focus directly on the second option.

What is disk cloning with the ability to set exceptions? If to speak in simple words, such a process involves the creation of a copy in which there will be only a part of the information that is stored on the original medium, and which is necessary for the user to save further.

Preliminary concepts of terms

When creating copies, two more concepts should be taken into account: the source and target disk. Based on the generally accepted interpretations of these terms, it is easy to guess that the source disk is an HDD or a partition from which all information will be copied, including an integral file structure. The target disk is the hard drive to which the recording will be made. created copy. However, it is worth noting that the target disk may have its own file structure (or data) different from the original disk (unless it is a new hard drive without any information on it), and during the clone creation process it will be destroyed and replaced with a file structure. source disk system.

Disk Cloning with Windows Tools

On Windows systems, to create copies of hard drives, the backup and restore section located in the Control Panel is used. True, in most cases, using such a built-in tool, you can only create a complete copy of the contents of the original disk or partition.

The only exception is that the copy may not include system files working system, which could later be used to restore its performance. Therefore, cloning disks with partial copying of their contents is best done using third-party utilities that have much broader capabilities. Some of them are paid, others can be downloaded for free.

Cloning a hard drive to an SSD or another partition: the best programs

It will not be possible to consider absolutely all applications created for such operations, so we will limit ourselves to several popular utilities, among which the following can be singled out separately:

• True Image from Acronis.
• EASEUS Disk Copy.
• Drive Backup Personal by Paragon.
• Macrium Reflect.

We will take disk cloning with the Acronis utility as the basis for the actions performed and the description of the process. Other programs work on similar principles. Therefore, having dealt with this application, it will be possible to easily perform similar actions that any other disk cloning program offers. Let's dwell on the rest of the utilities briefly.

Acronis True Image

This utility is the most famous and popular program to clone a hard drive. It has, perhaps, the widest range of possibilities and is used not only to create copies, but also to restore the system, create boot images and much more.

Disk cloning by Acronis utility after application start latest version starts with the fact that the program offers to log in to the "cloud" storage Acronis Cloud under your registration record. This procedure is optional, so you can skip it.

After selecting the cloning section, a special "Wizard" is launched in the process of creating copies. At the first stage, it is proposed to use either the automatic method or setting the parameters in manual mode. It is better to choose the first option, since the second is mainly used only in cases where you need to change the partition structure. It will not be considered due to the fact that it is more complex, and in this situation, by and large, the average user simply does not need it.

We select automatic cloning, after which you will need to install the source disk or partition and the target disk. Here, just the same, you can use disk cloning to an SSD drive, if one is installed in the system. At the next stage, if the target disk is not new, and there is some information on it, a corresponding warning will be issued, which you just need to agree with. In the case when a hard drive is cloned to an SSD with a similar file system, which has nothing on it, the notification will not be shown.

Next, copy partitions without changes is selected, and the program starts calculating the space on the target disk. If it is enough, you can start the process start. But if there is not enough space or just some components or sections do not need to be included in the copy, the file exclusion button located at the bottom right is used.

Exclude files system partition is not recommended in any case, and the remaining unnecessary objects should simply be selected in the window on the right by checking the corresponding files and folders in the file structure tree (you can even exclude an entire section). After that, a recalculation of the required disk space. If it is sufficient, it remains only to press the start button (“Proceed”), after which a reboot will be required (the clone is created in this mode).

If you now boot from the target disk (and it is boot disk), the partition structure will change somewhat, and partitions for which some objects were not copied will have a smaller volume compared to the original ones. In this case, the letters of all disks will change.

EASEUS Disk Copy

This program is quite interesting for free utility. In addition to the fact that partial cloning can be performed in it, it has a number of other advantages.

In addition to basic operations, it is quite easy to create copies of deleted partitions in it, but only if they have not been overwritten. The application itself can be launched from any optical or USB media, it supports all known interfaces of hard drives or dynamic partitions and HDDs up to 1 TB. The only negative is the lack of Russification and installation unnecessary programs when installed on Windows systems.

Drive Backup Personal by Paragon

Cloning disks with this program looks very simple due to the use of special "Wizards" in it for any copying mode, including the creation of clones with partial content.

The application can be launched both in the OS environment and with removable media, has a simple Russian-language interface, but, alas, it costs about $40.

Macrium Reflect

This free package for most untrained users, as well as previous program, is one of the easiest to use.

The main advantages of this application are the creation of images "on the fly" without the need to restart the system (as is the case with Acronis), the availability of copy verification tools and multi-level data encryption. In the interface, however, there is no Russian language, and unnecessary advertising garbage is installed during installation.

What to use?

If we briefly summarize everything that has been said about creating clones of hard drives with partial transfer of their contents to other partitions or to other HDDs or SSDs, we can say that the method proposed by the Acronis application looks the most appropriate in application, moreover is also one of the simplest. But this does not mean at all that you cannot use other utilities like the program from Paragon, which have no less interesting features and tools (if, of course, you omit the issue of cost). But in general, the techniques used by any application of this type are fairly simple, if only for the reason that in any program, as a rule, there is a "Wizard", so that doing something wrong will not work.