[Detailed Answer] Is Cloning A Hard Dive Safe & How to Clone

Cici updated on Mar 18, 2024 | Home >Computer Instruction

Are you wondering, "is cloning a hard drive safe?" When I was on Reddit the other day, I came across a post about the question:

I bought a new SSD (twice the size of my current one). Since I'm a developer, it would be very tedious to re-configure everything again. I also have some important files on my SSD. Will everything be the same, including the icons on my desktop? Is it 100% safe? What program should I use? - from Reddit

This piqued my interest, and I began searching to see if other people were concerned about cloning their hard drives. I then discovered that too many of you are clueless and need an answer. Like the developer, I know how much your data can mean to you.

So, is cloning a hard drive safe? Let's find out!

Is Cloning A Hard Drive Safe 

Yes, cloning a hard drive is perfectly safe — but it is true if you are using a 3rd-party application to clone a hard drive. If you decide to clone a hard drive using traditional tools, there is a possibility that you can misconfigure something and lose your files.

clone hard drive

Since third-party cloning programs are designed to be easy to use by people of all ages and levels of computer knowledge, you can clone your hard drive without worry.

Why Clone A Hard Drive 

Cloning a hard drive means creating a replica of your hard drive's data on another hard drive or an SSD. It is not the same as copy-pasting the files. When you clone your drive, you clone your computer's boot records, themes, settings, and more. So why should someone consider cloning their hard drive? Mainly because of the following two reasons:

1. Upgrading to a larger hard drive

Cloning your hard drive is a good option to upgrade to a larger hard drive. If your previous hard drive was 500 GB and the new one is 4 TB, only 500 GB of data will be cloned onto the new drive, and the rest is yours to use.

2. Upgrading to SSD from HDD:

You can upgrade from a hard drive to an SSD to experience blazing-fast boot speeds, file transfer speeds, or app launch. Making a clone of your hard drive can benefit the computer from the fast speeds of an SSD.

So now that we've discussed what cloning is, its benefits, and whether it's safe, let me also show you how to safely create a clone of your hard drive.

Important
Before we start, you should ensure two things:
1. Backup the essential data on your hard drive with professional backup software. Because cloned data will overwrite the old data.
2. Prepare enough space for the cloned data. You should ensure more space is available on the target drive than on the original drive.

How to Clone a Hard Drive Safely

EaseUS Partition Master is a disk doctor and magician. You can create a clone of your HDD or SDD with just a few clicks, and the process barely takes a few minutes to complete — it's that blazing fast. You can use it to clone partitions or clone the system.

Free Download 

Windows 11/10/8/7100% Secure

Also, if you're wondering if it will be difficult to use, the answer is no, and even a young adolescent can easily navigate through and create a clone of the hard drive. It is easy and simple to use.

Here's how to create a clone of your hard drive safely using EaseUS Partition Master:

Guide 1. Clone Partition

Follow the steps to clone the partition on the hard drive:

Step 1. Select "Clone" from the left menu. Click "Clone Partition" and "Next".

Step 2. Select the source partition and click "Next".

Step 3. Choose your the target partition and click "Next "to continue.

  • If you clone partition to the existing partition, you should transfer or back up data before cloning to prevent it being overwritten.
  • Check warning message and confirm "Yes".

Step 4. Click Start and wait for the clone to complete.

You can check how to clone partition or system reserved partition on this video tutorial.

Guide 2. Clone Hard Drive

Follow the steps to clone the entire hard drive:

Free Download 

Windows 11/10/8/7100% Secure

Step 1. Select the source disk.

  • Click the "Clone" from the left menu. Select the "Clone OS Disk" or "Clone Data Disk"  and click "Next".
  • Choose the source disk and click "Next".

Step 2. Select the target disk.

  • Choose the wanted HDD/SSD as your destination and click "Next" to continue.
  • Read Warning message and confirm "Yes" button.

Step 3. View the disk layout and edit the target disk partition size. 

Then click "Continue" when the program warns it will wipe out all data on the target disk. (If you have valuable data on the target disk, back up it in advance.)

You can select "Autofit the disk", "Clone as the source" or "Edit disk layout" to customize your disk layout. (Select the last one if you want to leave more space for C drive.)

Step 4. Click "Start" to start the disk cloning process.

After you cloned the hard drive, you can boot your computer from the cloned drive. And follow the steps to set the clone hard drive as the boot disk:

Step 1. Reboot your computer and press F2/F8/Del to enter BISO.

Step 2. Change the boot order and choose the cloned drive.

change boot order

EaseUS Partition Master is one of the greatest system clone software. You can use it to clone Windows to external hard drive/new SSD/ or other devices.

Besides, it also has more advanced functions, such as converting MBR to GPT without losing any files. And you can also resize partitions, create bootable partition managers, recover lost partitions, and so much more. 

Conclusion

So, is cloning a hard drive safe? As previously explained, yes, cloning a hard drive is safer and easier than ever thanks to third-party programs like EaseUS Partition Master.

You can also use EaseUS Partition Master for your new hard drive or SSD to create or delete a partition, extend or resize a partition, recover a lost partition, and so on.

Now that you know how easy it is to clone your hard drive get going and download EaseUS Partition Master and start cloning your hard drive!

Free Download 

Windows 11/10/8/7100% Secure

FAQ of Is Cloning A Hard Dive Safe 

Here is some more information about cloning a hard drive.

1. Is it better to clone or image a hard drive?

Both have their purposes. If you create an image of your hard drive, you can use that image file to create multiple clones of your hard drive. On the other hand, cloning is creating a replica of the hard drive, and it's faster to restore and get started. But with the image file, you get more backup options.

2. Is it safe to clone HDD to SSD?

Yes, it is safe to clone your HDD to an SSD. Use EaseUS Partition Master to clone your hard drive easily onto an SSD.

3. Why would you clone a hard drive?

You should clone your hard drive if you're looking for a solution where your hard drive is completely replicated on another hard drive with all your settings, themes, and everything intact. After you clone the hard drive, you can also get started immediately. This is why most people clone their drive.

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Updated by Tracy King

Tracy became a member of the EaseUS content team in 2013. Being a technical writer for over 10 years, she is enthusiastic about sharing tips to assist readers in resolving complex issues in disk management, file transfer, PC & Mac performance optimization, etc., like an expert.

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Written by Cici

Cici is the junior editor of the writing team of EaseUS. She accepted the systematic training on computers at EaseUS for over one year. Now, she wrote a lot of professional articles to help people resolve the issues of hard drive corruption, computer boot errors, and disk partition problems.

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