logo
ResourcesComputerCopy One Hard Drive to Another

How to Copy One Hard Drive to Another in Windows 10/8/7

By Michael | Last Updated

If you are looking for the safe way to copy one hard drive to another, or copy old hard drive to new computer, you will get to know the easy but effective way here. This article aims to showcase the way to copy one hard drive to another on Windows computer.

copy one hard drive to another Windows

Find the Reliable Windows Disk Clone Software—iSunshare CloneGo

How can we choose the reliable Windows disk clone software online? You need to have a test of the software. Here, we highly recommended iSunshare CloneGo, which offers user the free trial period. With this disk cloning software, you can make an exactly identical clone of the hard disk; no matter it is from internal hard drive to another hard drive or old hard drive to new one.

iSunshare CloneGo offers you the convenient way to transfer the system and partition data from one hard drive to another. There is no need to reinstall the Windows system because you can boot the computer from the new hard drive after completing the clone process. In addition, you can only move Windows operating system from one hard drive to another.

free trial

How to Safely Clone Whole Hard Drive to Another in Windows Computer

Before you begin the cloning process, you should make sure that there are two hard drive connected in Windows computer. Also, the target hard disk should be larger than the source disk. If there is any data in the target hard disk, you should make a backup of the disk data as the cloning process will format your target hard disk. You should initialize and add volume to the new hard disk.

Step 1: Start CloneGo and select Disk Clone from the left menu. After that, you can view all disks and partitions on your Windows computer. As you can see from the screenshot, there is an uninitialized partition under Disk 0—the source disk. Don't worry; the uninitialized partition is the hidden partition of the Windows OS. It will not affect the whole process.

select Disk Clone

Step 2: Simply choose the source disk and select the target disk. Actually, if there are only two hard disks on the Windows 10/8/7 computer, the source disk and target disk will be set by default.

select the source disk and target disk

Step 3: Tick the After Finished option and select Shutdown/Restart/Hibernate according to your situation. If the source disk is larger and you have no time waiting for the complement of the cloning, you can select Shutdown option which means the computer will automatically close when the process ends. It is also no problem if you do not check this option.

After Finished setting

Step 4: Click the Start button and it will pop up a window telling that the existing files on the target partition will be overwritten. If you have created the backup of those files, click Yes to go ahead.

click Start button and confirm the Copy action

Step 5: The entire disk cloning process begins. And you should left it to run automatically.

hard drive clone success

Manage the Target Hard Disk Space

After cloning, the data on the destination disk is 100% the same as the original one. As the new hard disk is larger than the old one, you can manage the target hard disk space in disk management. As you can see, the disk 1 is exactly identical to disk 0. And for the unallocated space in disk 1, you can extend the copied C drive or create new volume for the hard disk. In addition, you can take the second hard disk to new computer and set computer to boot from it. Anyway, the hard disk with the cloned data and system can work as the same as the original one.

disk management after cloning

Related Articles: