Operating system makes computer run and it stores a lot of important data. Now, information technology is developing at a high speed. Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 11 are popular nowadays. However, the operating system may crash or break all of a sudden.
Therefore, some users choose to copy operating system to external hard drive to keep the data safe and the copied OS can be used immediately after the computer crashes. You don't need to reinstall Windows, which saves much time and effort.
Besides, you can do so before upgrading system. Therefore, you can return to your old OS and get your data back when the new system goes wrong or you don't enjoy the new OS.
Since cloning Windows to external hard drive has so many benefits, how do we implement it? You can use excellent system clone software - Qiling Disk Master Professional. It provides you with two working ways, namely clone system or create a system image. In consideration of simple operation steps, here we recommend you clone system with this software.
And you can enjoy some useful features in the following:
First, you need to download Qiling Disk Master Professional and install it on your computer. (PS: The Clone features in free trial can only be demonstrated. Please upgrade to the full version to conduct the operation.)
Then, learn how to clone Windows 10 to external hard drive in detail below. The steps also apply to other PC systems. For server users, try Qiling Disk Master Server.
Step 1. Launch Qiling Disk Master. Select “System Clone” under the “Clone” tab as shown in the following picture.
Step 2. Select the destination partition for cloning the system. Here take “Disk1” as an example, select it and click “Next”.
After clicking “Next”, it will pop up a window to remind you the destination partition will be overwritten or deleted. If there isn’t any data on it, click “OK” to go on, or you need to click “Cancel” to cancel the operation and backup the important data first.
Step 3. Confirm the source partitions and destination partition, and click “Proceed” to copy Windows XP/7 to external hard drive. Well, if you are transferring OS to SSD, checking the “SSD Alignment” option will optimize the SSD performance.
You can set up more by pitching on the options in the left bottom.
After all the settings, you can leave the program to finish the process in the background. When the process reaches 100%, click “Finish”. You have done the system clone.
If you want to create a backup task for your computer OS, Qiling Disk Master can also do you a favor. Just create a system image using the “System Backup” feature. The backup process won’t interrupt your work, so you can backup OS while working. With a system image at hand, you can restore system to a previous state if your computer is not responding or stops working.
Copying an operating system to an external hard drive with Qiling Disk Master will be extremely simple. And it can further improve the SSD performance using 4k alignment technology and extend the size of system partition with its "Make full use of disk space" feature.
In addition, it still allows you to clone an SSD to a larger SSD in Windows 10, replace laptop HDD with SSD, clone SATA to NVMe, clone hard drive to Samsung SSD, etc. Anyway, it's worth-trying software for data protection.