By Clone Windows 10 on an SSD with free software in 2023!
If you want to give your aging computer a facelift, the most effective way is to Clone Windows 10 system partition to an SSD drive. You think this is a complicated task?
Well, it is quite simple with the method we are going to discuss today.
Clone Windows 10 on an SSD UPDATE 2023
Attention! Apparently, the EasuUs software recommended below does not allow you to clone your hard disk to an SSD for free anymore because this option is now exclusive to its paid version ($70).
M2 format SSDs are even faster and much smaller
If I understand correctly, it is still possible to backup your computer to a NAS or a USB disk, and then restore to an SSD. But it is impossible to proceed directly from the hard disk to the SSD.
I will make a new article sometime but here are the software that seems to be indicated in 2023 :
- Macrium Reflect Free (thanks to Marius in comment)
- Samsung Data Migration (exclusive to Samsung SSDs, I presume)
Why Clone Windows 10 to an SSD?
The hard drive is the memory on which all your operating system files reside. It is clearly the slowest memory and yet the system has to access it countless times per second.
Therefore, a slow hard drive will always have a huge negative impact on the responsiveness of your system; even if you have an expensive processor and an astronomical amount of RAM.
A few years ago, SSDs were still prohibitively expensive, but with a terabyte of data available today for over $100, there’s no reason to go without!
The advantages are numerous:
- Very short access times
- Very high throughput speed
- No noise
- Insensitive to shocks (laptop)
- Miniaturization
Once you’ve tried an SSD, it’s hard to go back to a mechanical hard drive.
Cloning your Windows partition to an SSD
Sometimes SSD manufacturers provide an in-house tool and software, but if not, don’t panic. You just need to get a backup software and then follow the associated procedure to clone a Windows 10 hard drive.
Here is the EasuUs Todo backup software with its simple and efficient interface
Basically, you plug in your SSD hard drive and via the software downloaded above, you can start the cloning process. You have to be careful to take your Windows 10 hard drive (recognizable by name and size) with all its partitions as the source and choose the new SSD drive as the destination.
The procedure is illustrated in video below with the free EaseUS software I suggested above. :
The duration of the procedure will depend on the volume to be processed and the software will give you a more or less accurate estimate to get an idea.
Be careful not to interrupt this procedure and to be attentive to possible errors reported.
Using your freshly cloned SSD
Once the procedure is finished, you will find yourself with exactly the same content on your old disk as on your SSD.
You will then have to either remove the old disk or specify in the Bios to boot the system on the SSD system.
The advantage of the latter solution is that you can also reformat your old disk to continue using it as additional storage capacity, which can be very useful for making a full backup of your machine or having some extra storage to install games on Steam for example.
In short, these manipulations once reserved for computer specialists are now made very simple thanks to well thought-out tools and associated explanatory videos that can be found on YouTube.
