Most people that buy new hard drives or replacing older worn out hard drives assume that migrating windows to a new hard drive is a daunting process. This however is not the case as there is something called “cloning”. This is the process of simply mirroring everything of your old hard drive onto your new hard drive which includes the operating system along with all user data such as documents, music, videos, applications etc.
Cloning is basically everything to copy everything from your old hard drive onto the newer one in a seamless way. The result is that most users would not even notice that they are on a newer hard drive as their data is left untouched and unaffected and their computer is able to boot up as it always would, unless of course there was an underlying issue with the hard drive not booting. There are other options available for migrating an operating system but cloning is by far the easiest and is what we recommend to all our clients here at Cryptic.
If you are in the market for a new hard drive and are looking to upgrade on your current computer hard drive, SSD’s are the way to go as this is the fastest option available at the moment and is far better than traditional hard drives which get worn over time, normally slower, and are louder that SSD’s which are silent due to the fact that they function on flash memory rather than having a traditional spinning disk. SSD’s have also become cheaper in recent years and now have cheaper and more budget friendly options on the market available. There are also a variety of brands available on the market but in our personal experience, we have not found this to be a huge factor in determining which SSD to purchase.
Cloning is a very simple process and can be done very easily by just the click of a few buttons using different types of software options available on the market. There are many types of applications available for cloning ranging from free to paid and some of the applications that can be used are as follows:
- Acronis True Image – Paid
- EaseUS Todo Backup- Paid
- Macrium Reflect- Free
- Disk Genius- Paid
- Aomei Backupper- Paid
All these applications mentioned above do a very good job of cloning operating systems and are all fairly simply to use. We have tried all of them and Acronis is the best option as it offers the most functionality but is also pricey for those on a budget. If you are looking for a free option then Macrium Reflect works perfect. It does not offer as much functionality but if you are looking for just a basic disk clone then Macrium Reflect is able to do that. You simply just install the software on your PC, Connect you new hard drive up to the PC, open the software, select your old hard drive as the source, then you select the new hard drive as the destination and the start the disk clone. A typical disk clone will take an hour or so depending on the amount of data that needs to be cloned. If you have over a terabyte of data that needs to be transferred then you can expect to be waiting a few hours or so.
Cloning is the most effective way to transfer an operating system to another hard drive and has become our favourite way of transferring an operating system to a newer hard drive as it is simple and seamless. Before attempting to clone a hard drive though always make sure that your destination hard drive has sufficient space and has been formatted in the correct format before attempting a clone.