▷ How to clone hard drive in windows 10 【step by step】

In this new step by step we are going to deal with a topic that you will surely like a lot, and it is the possibility of cloning Windows 10 hard drive. What we are going to try to do is take our main hard drive where we will have installed. Windows 10 and hot clone it, from Windows itself to a different hard drive.

Index of contents

Cloning the content of one hard disk to another is very useful if we want to build a new team and have exactly the same files in one as in the other. Or also if we have bought a new SSD and we want to move all the contents of our old hard drive to this new storage unit.

Clone Windows 10 hard drive

The application that we are going to use to do this is called Partition Assistant. It is a free application so we can download it from its official page at no cost.

One of the great advantages offered by this application is that we can clone our hard disk directly from Windows with both disks working. We will not have the need to do it either in command mode or from a disk or bootable image at the beginning of the computer.

The new hard drive does not need to be larger than the current one. We only have to take into account that the occupied space is less than the capacity of the new hard disk

Install Partition Assistant

We start with the installation of this software. The first thing we will have to do is choose the installation language, since we have the option of Spanish, because we choose this one.

Before proceeding with the installation, an advertising window will appear, to which we will only have to click "Jump". The wizard will finally begin.

The installation process will be as easy as choosing in all the "Next" windows , except that we want to install it in a certain directory. Otherwise it is typical and easy.

Cloning process

Once the program is installed, we will proceed to start it. In this way we can clone Windows 10 hard disk in a different one. We will find the following:

We will have an environment in which the options will be located on the left side of the program. The storage units, for their part, will be located in the area on the right. We can see that we have three hard drives, the main drive where we have Windows 10 installed corresponds to drive C: (represented as drive 2)

We want to clone this hard drive to a new 200GB one called Disk 3 or drive "F:".

The first thing we will have to do is go to the side menu and select the option “Copy from disk”. Here we will be presented with two options:

• With the first one we will be able to clone the space used on the main hard drive, without the need to clone the sectors that are not being used on the hard drive. With the second option we will clone the disk as we have it physically, both the sectors with data and empty sectors.

In our case, it is best to choose the first option, since it will be faster and we will not have the need to clone empty sectors or those with previously deleted and fragmented files. Click on the "Next" button.

In the next step we must select the hard drive that we want to clone. Normally this will be represented with the letter "C:". If we are not sure, it will be best to look first at the storage capacity of each one. And later in the model.

Once the hard disk is chosen, we will only have to click "Next"

Now it's time to select the destination disk. All the files on the previously selected disk will go to this new disk. As before, we locate this by letter, capacity or model.

Just below this window we see an option to optimize performance if the new hard drive is an SSD type. If so, we mark it. Again we click “Next”.

All files on the destination disk will be removed during cloning.

On the next screen we can make changes to the destination hard drive. This is especially useful when we want to clone from a smaller hard drive or a larger one or vice versa. We will have different options:

• We will be able to copy the hard disk without resizing the new one, this means that the same space will be used on the new hard disk as there was on the old one. This means that the rest of the space can be used for another partition. We can also automatically allocate all the space on the new disk to record the data. In this case we will have a complete hard disk for the dumped data. The last option gives the possibility of resizing the partition where the data of the source disk will be cloned. Leaving everything else free to later make new partitions.

In our case, it is a larger hard drive, so we will take advantage to make another partition that will be destined for our documents. Click on "Next"

This will be the last window of the cloning assistant. Here we are informed that the new cloned hard drive may not boot properly. We will study that later. We click on "Next".

We will return to the main window of the program where we will have to give "Apply" in the upper left corner for cloning to begin.

We are informed that to carry out the process our team will restart. In this case we click on "Proceed" and do nothing until the wizard finishes. If we do not have RAID we will leave the option checked in the pop-up window that appears.

Once the cloning process is finished, the computer will restart itself and again we will be in Windows located in the old Unit C:

Now we are going to do some procedures to leave the disk ready to boot on another computer.

Create a partition

During the previous process we left a piece of the new hard disk to make a partition for our documents. In this case we are going to finish preparing it with the same program.

To do this, we start the program again and select the partition represented in white from our newly cloned hard drive. Then we are going to give "Create partition"

Nothing else, we only accept the actions to be taken in case we do not want to touch anything. The next thing will be to give the option of "Apply" to apply the changes made. The partition will be ready to use.

Partition alignment (payment option)

Another thing we will have to do is make sure that the data on the new hard drive is correctly aligned with the sectors of the disk. If the alignment is not correct we could find ourselves with a malfunction of the system and it would also be detrimental to the disc.

In this case what we will do is select the partition or hard disk that we have cloned. Next, we will look for the option in the side menu of “Partition alignment”.

The parameters that we must establish will be of an alignment for “1024 sector”. Then we click "OK". In this way our hard drive will be in line and the performance will be optimal.

Booting the new cloned hard drive

The cloning process involves installing the boot sector or MBR on the new disk. So it will not be necessary to reinstall this. We can find two different scenarios:

If the hard disk is directed to another new computer, it will only be necessary to install it on it. The boot sequence will automatically be detected on the first partition that has the Windows MBR configured.

If the hard disk is going to stay on the same computer, we will have to assign the new hard disk as the first boot drive from the BIOS. For this, the first thing we must do is press the corresponding key to access the BIOS Setup just when starting the computer.

• To find out which key it is we will look for a message that says: “Press to enter setup ” or something similar. In this way we will access the BIOS.

Keep in mind that the BIOS in the example does not have to be the same as yours, although all of them will have a "Boot" section

• Now we are going to go with the navigation keys to the "Boot" section and we unfold the options of "Hard Drive" (hard disk) In it we choose the cloning as the first disk, so that it can start. Then, we press "F10" to save changes and restart the computer

We should now be able to boot from our new hard drive. If we want to use the old one to store files, we could format it from the Partition Assistant program itself or from Windows.

If you want to be sure that all the system files are correct, we recommend our tutorial on:

• How to use CHKDSK Windows 10

Also one of our most valued guides:

This concludes our tutorial on cloning Windows 10 hard drive. Leave us in the comments that you think of the procedure. If you have bought a new SSD hard drive this is one of the best options you have to avoid having to reinstall Windows 10 again.