Does Cloning a Hard Drive Copy the OS?

I wanna replace my old HDD with a larger SSD because the HDD is almost full. Cloning is always considered a good practice to replace a hard drive. But does cloning a hard drive copy the OS?

Yes, cloning the hard drive will copy the OS.

It will not only copy the OS; all of the source drive's contents will also be copied to the target drive. Therefore, you must be very careful while cloning since all your crucial data will be lost if you choose the source and target drives incorrectly.

Thus, you should check the source and target drives before starting the procedure. Also, if your SSD is not new, there may be data on it. In such cases, you should make a backup of your SSD because everythingng on the drive will be wiped.

If your hard disk has multiple partitions and the operating system is on it, you clone the entire hard drive. Yes, you also clone the OS.

You can copy the Windows system partition to the external hard drive using a third-party cloning tool, such as EaseUS Disk Copy. This is because Windows does not have a cloning utility allowing you to clone a hard drive.

EaseUS Disk Copy is a practical cloning tool for Windows 11/10/8/7. It can help you clone the system, disk, partition, etc. And it can help you perform a sector-by-sector clone. Therefore, you can clone a hard drive with bad sectors. In addition, it lets you migrate OS from HDD to SSD or SSD to SSD easily and quickly and transfer the C drive to a new SSD.

Cloning a hard disk will not only copy the OS but also copy everything on the drive.