There are plenty of great services that can back up your files, but sometimes you need something a little more bulletproof. Maybe you’re migrating your Windows installation to a new hard drive, or perhaps you want a complete one-to-one copy in case something goes wrong. In those cases, your best bet is to clone the hard drive, make an exact copy that you can swap out, and boot up in no time.
Some backup services, like IDrive and Acronis, have built-in disk cloning features that complement regular file backups. However, we will be using some free tools designed specifically for hard drive cloning in this guide. If you want a true backup solution with extra replication features, check out one paid option. But for a one-time clone (like migrating the OS to a new hard drive), these tools should be all you need.
Connect your second hard drive
For this process, you will need two hard drives: the source hard drive (with the data you want to copy) and the destination hard drive (where you are copying the data). If you have a desktop and both hard drives are installed internally (or you clone to a USB external hard drive for backup), great! You are ready to continue.
However, if you’re using a laptop with only one hard drive bay, you’ll need an external SATA to USB adapter, dock, or case to connect your bare hard drive to the computer. Once you have your hard drive connected, you can go through the process of cloning, then disconnecting and installing the internal hard drive.
In most cases, your target hard drive will probably need to be as large or larger than your source hard drive. If not, you’ll need to free up space on your source hard drive and shrink the primary partition down accordingly. (You’ll probably only need to do this if you’re migrating from an HDD to a smaller SSD; we have a separate guide on that process here.)
Windows Users: Clone, Your Hard Drive with Macrium, Reflect Free
Windows users have plenty of great copying tools available, but we’ll be using Macrium Reflect Free. It’s free, easy to use, and loved by many, so it’s hard to get it wrong.
To install Macrium Reflect, download the Home Use installer and start it up. That is just a small tool that will download the actual installer based on the license type you want. Select a temporary directory for these files. I just put them in my Downloads folder and click the Download button.
Once finished, it will automatically launch the Macrium installation wizard, which you can right-click through the default options, which should be fine for our purposes. You can safely delete all installer files from the Downloads folder after the wizard finishes.
Start the copying process.
Open Macrium Reflect, and you will see a detailed list of disks connected to your computer. You have two main options: you can directly clone one disc to another or create an image of the disc cloning allows you to boot from a second disk, which is great for moving from one drive to another. On the other hand, images allow you to store as many full, one-to-one copies of your source disk as the destination’s space will allow, which is useful for backups.
Select the disk you want to clone (make sure to check the leftmost box if your disk has multiple partitions) and click “Clone This Disk” or “Image This Disk.”
Select the folder to save the copy
In the next window, select your destination disk, one that will contain your newly copied data. Note that this will erase all data on the disk, so be careful what you choose. If there is any old data on it, you may want to select it and click the “Delete existing partition” button until the drive is empty.
If you are copying to a larger hard drive, you will want to click the “Cloned Partition Properties” button at the bottom of this window and expand your primary partition to fill the entire disk space.
Your copy schedule
The next page will ask if you want to schedule this copy, which is useful to image your hard drive for backup purposes regularly. I overlooked this since I only do a copy at a time. On the following page, you can also save the backup and its schedule as an XML file for safekeeping, but I unchecked that option because I only do this once now.
Boot from your cloned hard drive
Finally, Macrium Reflect will start the copying process. That may take some time, depending on the size of your hard drive, so give it time to do it. If you cloned your hard drive, you should be able to boot from it by selecting it in your BIOS. If you’re taking pictures of your hard drive, you can keep the second hard drive connected for future image backups.
Mac Users: Clone Your Hard Drive with SuperDuper
If you’re on a Mac, we recommend SuperDuper for all your copying needs. It’s free, simple to use, and has been around for years. Download the app, open the DMG file and double click the icon to install. (Don’t drag it into your /Applications folder as most Mac apps do; double-clicking it will install it to your computer.)
Once installed, open SuperDuper, and you’ll be greeted with an incredibly simple, intuitive interface. In the first menu next to “Clone,” select the source disk you want to clone. Please select the destination disk you are copying to; this will completely erase the hard drive in that second menu, so make sure there’s nothing important on it! When you are ready, click the “Copy Now” button. The process will begin.
Complete your hard drive clone
That may take a while, but when it’s done, you have two options. If you want to replace your Mac’s internal hard drive with a new one (say, if you’re migrating to a larger hard drive), you can open your Mac and swap them out now, then boot up move as usual.
If you want to boot your cloned hard drive from a USB, you can hold down the Option key as your Mac boots and select it from the startup list. Your cloned hard drive will be in the correct state; your computer is in the process of copying, and you can continue working without skipping a beat.