Easiest Way to Clone Hard Drive in Windows 8, 8.1 to New HDD, SSD
The need to clone Windows 8 hard drive
In order to get better performance, now you are planning to upgrade to a new hard drive. And based on one of the following reasons, you want to perform Windows 8 hard drive clone.
- If you have a Windows 8 installation disk, you can simply install Windows 8 on the new hard drive. But you still have to copy and paste the other files from the old drive to the new one. No matter the Windows reinstalling or files transfer will take a lot of time.
- Or maybe you can create a recovery drive and perform a restore on the new hard drive. But you may not boot your computer from the new hard drive smoothly.
- For anyone who tends to upgrade to a smaller SSD, you just cannot restore the backup to it. Because the destination drive must be equal or larger to the old drive.
In a word, you want a way that can help you directly clone Windows 8 hard drive to new drive, with Windows system and all the other files. Besides, it should be possible to clone hard drive to smaller SSD.
To help you clone Windows 8 hard drive to larger HDD or smaller SSD, the disk cloning software is the way to go. And if you prefer the easiest solution, Qiling Disk Master Professional can be your best choice. It will meet all your needs related to Windows 8 hard drive clone.
Best cloning software for Windows 8/8.1
Qiling Disk Master Professional, one comprehensive backup, restore, clone software for Windows 8/8.1, is your best choice for Windows 8 hard drive clone. Below are some obvious advantages of it:
- It helps you clone entire hard drive to new HDD or SSD directly, including operating system, installed applications and all the other data you will never want to lose.
- It allows you to clone larger HDD to smaller SSD as long as the used space is smaller than SSD disk.
- The "SSD Alignment" option can help accelerate the reading and writing speed for the SSD if you want to clone hard drive to an SSD.
- It supports both MBR disk and GPT/UEFI disk. So you can use it to clone system disk between two MBR disks, clone GPT disk to GPT with OS installed, or clone MBR disk to GPT disk or vice versal.
In addition, the cloning process will not affect your work with the computer and it will make the cloned SSD bootable if you are cloning a system drive. Now checking the next part to learn the detailed steps to clone Windows 8 hard drive.
How to clone HDD to SSD in Windows 8/8.1
Here we will show you how to clone Windows 8 hard drive to new SSD with the best disk cloning software - Qiling Disk Master Professional. And the following steps are also applicable to clone Windows 10 hard drive. You should know that the data on the destination disk will be erased. So you'd better backup the new hard drive in advance if you have important data stored on it.
Step 1. Download, install and launch Qiling Disk Master Professional.
Step 2. Click Clone and then choose Disk Clone.
Notes:
● You can also choose Partition Clone to only move the partition you need.
● To only clone Windows to SSD, the System Clone feature can help you make it. If it is a system disk, the cloned SSD will remain bootable.
Step 3. Select the source hard drive you plan to clone (here is Disk0) and then click Next to continue.
Step 4. Select the target hard drive (here is Disk1) and click Next to go on.
Step 5. Tick "SSD Alignment" to accelerate the reading and writing speed of the destination SSD. Finally, click Proceed to clone hard drive to SSD in Windows 8.
Notes:
● "Sector by sector clone" will clone all the sectors on a hard drive no matter it is used or not and it will take longer time. Select it if you clone an encrypted disk or your data on the source disk is damaged but you want to restore it.
● "Edit Partitions(advanced version)" allows you to adjust partition size of target disk to avoid unallocated space after cloning disk to larger disk. And it also has the ability to convert MBR to GPT and vice versa.
Step 6. Click Finish when the cloning process reaches 100%.
Tip on how to transfer Windows 8 to another computer:
You can first create a disk image backup and then perform a restore. If your computer is not bootable, you need to create a bootable USB first. Please remember to tick the Universal Restore feature, which helps you restore image backup to another computer that has dissimilar hardware and ensure secure boot.
Conclusion
As you can see, you can easily clone HDD to SSD in Windows 8/8.1 with the help of Qiling Disk Master Professional. With just a few clicks, you can move everything you need to the new hard drive or SSD. And this also applies to clone HDD to SSD in Windows 10 and other previous system, such as, Windows 7/XP/Vista. Besides, you can still move single data partition to another partition or disk.
And this software still is professional backup software to help you protect data continuously. It offers system backup, file backup, disk backup, and partition backup, and you can make a backup for your old hard drive in case you may need any files in the future, and also set scheduled backup for your new hard drive to keep data safe. Please download it to have a try right now!
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