If you are going to clone C drive to external hard drive in Windows 7/8/10 computer, creating an exact copy that you can swap in and boot up immediately, here you will find the effective and easy way to make it done at ease.

clone c drive to external hard drive in windows

Why do you need to clone C drive to external hard drive?

The C drive is always the system drive in Windows7/8/10 computer. When you are going to clone the C drive to external hard drive, it means you want to clone OS to the external hard drive. When and why you need to do this operation? We summed up several situations here.

  1.  You plan to clone OS from HDD to SSD and make the SSD with larger space as a boot disk. Meanwhile, the old HDD can serve as the data disk. In this way, you can make the computer work much faster and store much more data.
  2.  If your computer stops working from time to time and you want to upgrade it, it is better to copy C drive to a new drive. As a result, it is no need to spend time reinstalling the OS and your necessary applications.
  3. Your computer has been used for a long time and there are lots of tools installed on C drive. And you are suggested to replace the hard drive to improve the performance. In order to make the new hard drive works the same as the old one, you need to clone system drive to the external hard drive.

Copy C drive to External Hard Drive with free Windows cloning software

For you to clone the external hard drive in Windows 7/8/10 as easy as possible, the powerful and free to trial Windows cloning software has been developed—iSunshare CloneGo. It gives you the opportunity to clone the whole C drive from an internal hard disk to the external hard drive. More importantly, you can make the external hard drive bootable on any Windows computer. Let’s explore how to achieve it step by step.

iSunshare CloneGo

 

Step 1: Connect your external hard drive.

First of all, you should prepare the external hard drive: HDD/SSD. If you are using a desktop computer, you should turn off the computer and open the computer case. Then, you can use the SATA cable to make the SSD/HDD connected with the computer. For laptop users, they can directly make the external hard drive connected.

Step 2: Initialize the new HDD/SSD.

After you restart the computer, you should go to Computer Management and check Disk Management (7 Ways to open computer management in Windows 10). At this time, you can get the Initialize Disk option. Click it and you need to select the disk and choose the partition style: MBR or GPT. In the end, Click OK and finish the initialization. Besides, you need to create a new volume for the disk.

initialize the new SSD

Step 3: Choose C drive as the source partition under the Copy feature.

Firstly, you need to download and install CloneGo on your computer. Then, start this program and click Copy on the left menu. After that, you can select C drive as the source target in the Select a Source Partition part.

select C drive as source partition

 

Step 4: Make the external hard drive as the destination partition.

In the Select a Target Partition part, you need to choose the external hard drive or its partition as the destination target. And this software will format it later. Therefore, you should make a backup of the external hard drive data if it is not a new drive. In addition, you should check the option “Set the target partition as the boot disk” so that you can boot the computer from the external hard drive.

select external hard drive as target partition

 

Step 5: Begin the Clone Process.

If you think you can not wait for the long cloning process, you can check the After Finished option and select Shutdown/Restart/Hibernate. After that, click the Start button to proceed with the clone process.

check After Finished option and click Start
Step 6: Replace the cloned hard drive with your hard drive if needed.

After you get the C drive cloned in the external hard drive, you can install it on the computer and it is better for you to add the new volume to the hard drive for data management in the future.

Video Tutorial: How to Clone C Drive to External Hard Drive with CloneGo

CloneGO free download

 


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