Can I Boot Windows 10 from a Cloned Drive?

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Larissa· Answered on Nov 15, 2023

Yes, you can boot your Windows 10 from a cloned hard drive with the following steps:

• Replace the old hard drive with the new cloned one;
• Set the new clone drive as the boot one in BIOS;
• Boot your PC from the clone drive. 

If your cloned hard drive is unbootable, it could be caused by the following factors:

• The Windows 10 OS cloning process is failed or corrupted;
• Your computer can't detect the cloned hard drive;
• The cloned hard drive doesn't include the OS bootable sector. 

If you want to have a successful hard drive cloning and boot from it in BIOS without any problems, please follow the complete steps below:

Step 1. Use a SATA cable to connect your new hard drive to your computer. Make sure it is connected properly and recognized.

Step 2. Initialize the new hard drive to the same partition style as the source hard drive in Dism Management.

Step 3. Clone Windows 10 operating system to the new hard drive with disk cloning software, like EaseUS Disk Copy or Clonezilla.

Step 4. Boot from the cloned hard drive in BIOS by restarting your PC and clicking F2/F8/F11 key to enter the BIOS setting. Then go to the boot section and set the cloned drive as the bootable one.

Step 5. Restart your computer, and it will boot your Windows 10 from the clone hard drive.

Choosing a reliable disk cloning tool is the key to the success of cloning. We highly recommend you use EaseUS Disk Copy. It supports cloning between different types and brands of hard drives, like cloning HDD to SSD, migrating data from a small M.2 SSD to a larger one, etc. It also has the sector-by-sector clone, allowing you to clone only used space. Using it, you won't worry about data loss or a failed process. Download and try it. It won't let you down. 

Related Article: How to Boot from SSD After Cloning