Chances are that during this Christmas you bought (or received) a new hard drive for your PC. But of course, changing the main storage unit of the PC can be quite a hassle for the simple act of having to install Windows and all your programs from scratch so why not clone your windows installation on the new SSD? In this article, we tell you which are the best tools to do so.
For this article, we are going to assume that you don’t have or don’t want to buy a hardware clone tool, which is the easiest one but requires spending some money. Therefore, the idea is to connect the new SSD to the PC and, connecting the new and old ones at the same time, clone their contents (including Windows) using a software tool.
Windows Clone Tools (Paid)
We start with EaseUS Disk Copy, surely the easiest tool to use to clone your hard drive to another storage unit. Its interface is intuitive and easy to use and you will hardly have to do anything since the process is automatic. Of course, the free version of this software has some limitations, and the paid version costs around 30 dollars.
On the other hand, we have AOMEI Backupper, another tool to clone your Windows installation to a new SSD quickly and easily. Of course, in this case the free version of the software does not allow you to clone disks, so you will have to resort to the paid version, which costs $39.95 per year (it is by subscription).
O&O DiskImage is another of the many tools you’ll come across when you want to clone Windows to your new SSD. It is a modern and fast software that will allow you to create a complete system image to the generation of disks for virtual machines, but of course it will also allow you to clone the disk to a new one. Its price is $49.95 for a lifetime license.
Finally, we have Acronis Disk Director, a very easy to use tool that will help you clone your Windows installation to a new storage drive. It’s a paid program (it costs $42 for a lifetime license), but the “Trial” version gives you 30 days of free use, although it limits the maximum space to just 10 GB, that’s why we left it for last, because usually installing operating systems already takes more space (however, you can consider buying it if you really need it).
And there is no way to do it completely for free?
If you don’t want to pay anything, don’t despair because there are also ways to do it, although yes, a little more laborious. In this case, the best way to do it (and, personally, the one we’ve been using for years without any problems) is to use Clonezillaa completely free software which, in reality, will only ask you to carry out certain previous steps and, yes, for which you will also need to have a unit USB key at least 8 GB available.
As we already mentioned, this tool is completely free but it requires a bit more work. Luckily, if you’ve never done this before, don’t worry, because a while ago we already published a complete tutorial on how to clone your disk using Clonezilla. Just access the link and follow the instructions to the letter: you won’t have any problem and in a few minutes you will have your old disk cloned on the new SSD.
