Clone External Hard Drive to Another External Hard Drive Easily
Quick Navigation:
- Why clone an external hard drive to another external hard drive?
- Easiest method to clone external hard drive to another
- Stepwise guide: clone one external hard drive to another in Windows 10 or 11
- FAQs on how to clone an external hard drive
- Verdict
Why clone an external hard drive to another external hard drive?
As a matter of fact, many users clone an external hard drive to another for backup copies, which adds an extra layer of files on the external hard drive. If your external disk is damaged or lost, you still have a duplicate copy. It's similar to backup external hard drive to another external hard drive, but they are not exactly the same.
| Backup external hard drive to another | clone external hard drive to another | |
| Operations | backup to a temporary storage and then restore to another external disk. | directly copy external hard drive to another external hard drive |
| Form | compressed image file | uncompression source file |
| Requirements | a temporary storage | no extra device |
| Data accessible | no, only access or modify your data after restoring the image file | yes, you can directly access or modify your data |
| Cots time | double | single |
Also, some users use it to transfer a large amount of data quickly, or clone a bootable hard drive and make it bootable. You can then use the bootable disk to start your computer and troubleshoot it in the event of system failure or other serious scenarios.
Easiest method to clone external hard drive to another
As mentioned many times in my other articles, cloning an external hard drive to another is the easiest way to migrate everything from one hard drive to another. And you don't need to worry about data loss and reinstall Windows & programs.
However, none of the current versions of Windows have this cloning feature. We highly recommend you powerful disk clone software Qiling Disk Master Standard to clone external hard drive to another external hard drive in Windows 11, 10, 8.1, 8, 7, XP, and Vista.
- Have a clear graphic user interface and easy to operate.
- Clone data disk from MBR to MBR with its Disk Clone feature.
- Clone large HDD to smaller SSD with its Intelligent Clone feature.
- Optimize SSD disk performance, such as reading & writing speed.
- Support a wide range of disk brands, such as SanDisk, WD, Samsung, Toshiba, Transcend, etc.
- Advanced features, such as clone MBR disk to GPT, Edit Partitions, migrate operating system to SSD, etc.
Stepwise guide: clone one external hard drive to another in Windows 10 or 11
By default, Qiling Disk Master Standard clones only used sectors from one hard drive to another. So it will be ok if the another external hard drive is smaller.
Before cloning external hard drive in Windows 10 or11, get the following things prepared:
- Install these two external hard drives to your PC and make sure they can be detected by Windows. Prepare two connectors, such as USB-to-SATA cable or adapter, if necessary.
- Remember clearly which disk is the source external drive, because all data on the destination external drive will be overwritten during the cloning process.
Then, learn how to clone an external hard drive using the following steps:
1. Install and launch Qiling Disk Master Standard. Then, on the main page of this software, click Clone > Disk Clone.
2. In the Source Disk window, select the external hard drive you want to clone.
3. In the Destination Disk window, select another external hard drive to receive all the data on the source disk.
4. Tick Sector by sector clone if you want to clone all sectors of the original disk. It requires the target disk to be equal to or larger than the source disk. Optionally, click SSD Alignment to accelerate the writing and reading speed of SSD disk (if it is). Then, confirm everything is ok and click Proceed to copy external hard drive to another external hard drive.
The Edit Partitions feature allows you to extend partition to unallocated space by Add unsed space to all partitions or Manually adjust partition size. Note both options are supported by the professional version. You can also use it to convert MBR to GPT or vice versa.
FAQs on how to clone an external hard drive
The following questions are highly relevant to how to clone an external hard drive. Check the answer if you have similar questions.
Q 1. How to backup external hard drive to another external hard drive in Windows 10?
1. Open Qiling Disk Master Standard. Click Disk Bacup under the Backup tab.
2. Select the source and destination external hard drive subsequently. Remember to click Next.
3. Click Schedule Backup and enable Daily, Weekly, Monthly, etc. schedule settings. Finally, click Proceed.
Q 2. How do I clone a hard drive to another hard drive?
Q3. Can I clone large HDD to smaller SSD?
Verdict
Cloning external hard drive to another external hard drive is the easiest way to make a duplicate copy of your important files on the disk, and you can view, modify, or delete files in the target disk at any time without restoring the image file. Free disk clone software - Qiling Disk Master can be great helper.
Also, you still can use it to clone system disk, such as clone GPT disk to MBR, and make it bootable. Note it's available on the professional version of Qiling Disk Master. In addition, you can also use it to clone OS only instead of entire disk. For server users, you could consider using Qiling Disk Master Server.
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