How to Clone My Hard Drive to SSD for Free?

Many users want to clone a hard drive to an SSD for improved performance. SSDs are becoming increasingly inexpensive, as are the many varieties. It gains market share because of its rapid speed, good durability, and enormous capacity.

The problem is that if you manually reinstall all programs and transfer all data from the old HDD to your new SSD, which would takes up too much time, you may need several days to set all in fine. In this situation, cloning hard drive to SSD can save your energy and time.

With a reliable cloning tool, you can make a duplicate of your hard drive on the new disk, and some cloning software also allows users to clone a large disk to a smaller one.

Free disk clone software--AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard

Because Windows lacks built-in cloning software, the only way to clone a hard drive to an SSD in Windows 10 or older versions of the operating system is to use a third-party cloning app.

AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is a free disc and partition manager that runs on Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7/XP. Its “Disk Clone Wizard” feature can offer you:

• Considerate clone options

◤ Clone Disk Quickly only copies the used space of the source disk to SSD. The destination SSD should be larger than the used space of the source disk and can be smaller than the source disk.

◤ Sector-by-Sector Clone copies all sectors of the source disk to SSD no matter it is used or not. The target SSD should be larger than the source HDD or SSD.

• Partition 4K alignment

Because SSDs have a different structure than HDDs, the partitions must be aligned along the SSD block boundaries throughout the cloning process. AOMEI Partition Assistant will do the operation for you, so you don't have to worry about the alignment of the SSD or the speed of the cloned SSD.

• Live migration way

This tool employs the live migration also called hot clone method to clone your data. During the process, you can continue your work and keep your running programs.

How do I clone my hard drive to SSD?

After we choose a suitable cloning tool, let’s start to clone HDD to SSD with it.

Preparations:

1.      Make sure your SSD is connected steadily to your computer, and the power supply is steady.

2.      If you’re a laptop user, you might need an SATA adapter.

Step 1. Install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. Go to “All Tools” and “Disk Clone Wizard”.

Step 2. In this window, choose a clone method and click “Next”.

Step 3. Choose your hard drive as the source disk and click the “Next” button.

Step 4. Choose the SSD as your target disk; check “Optimize the performance of SSD” to align SSD partitions; then click “Next”.

Step 5. Choose one between two available options in this window and click “Next”. When cloning to a smaller disk, the first option will be greyed out. Then, you’ll be prompted by a note about how to boot the operating system from the destination disk. Click “Finish”.

▪ Clone without resizing partitions: Keep the size of source partitions.

▪ Fit partitions to the entire disk: Adjust the partition size automatically to fit the whole target disk.

▪ Edit partitions on this disk: Change partition size manually on the destination disk as you like.

Step 6. You’ll be in the main interface. Click “Apply” and “Proceed” to commit operation.

Note: For cloning data disk to SSD, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard supports MBR to MBR/GPT or GPT to MBR/GTP. For cloning system disk to SSD, it supports only MBR to MBR. If you want to clone the MBR system disk to GPT or the GPT system disk to MBR/GPT, you need to upgrade to the Professional edition.

Bonus tips: How to do an OS migration from HDD to SSD?

If your SSD is smaller than HDD and it’s acceptable for you to only keep OS and reinstall all other programs, you can do an OS only migration from your hard drive to SSD via this Windows 10 migration tool.

Ending lines

The best clone software--AOMEI Partition Assistant can help you simply clone hard drive to SSD. Furthermore, it offers many other useful features such as relocating directories and installed applications, converting to GPT/MBR without wiping disc, FAT32 and NTFS convertor, and so on. With this tool, you can simply manage your computer like an expert.