How to Copy Your Windows Installation to an SSD

If you're still using a traditional, spinning hard disk on your PC, you're missing out. Swapping it out for a solid-state drive (SSD) is one of the best upgrades you can make in terms of speeding up your computer. It'll boot faster, programs will launch instantly, and games won't take so long to load anymore.

You could reinstall Windows from scratch, if you wanted to, and start new with a fresh, squeaky-clean system. While that might seem simpler, it's actually much more of a hassle. Copying your drive will get you up and running much quicker, as long as you follow these instructions.

What You'll Need: An SSD

Obviously, in order to upgrade to an SSD, you'll need to, well, buy an SSD. We have some recommendations here, though if you're on a pretty strict budget, we have a separate list of cheap SSDs as well. Make sure to buy the right form factor for your computer (some laptops will use 2.5-inch drives, while others might use M.2 or mSATA drives), and get one big enough to fit all your data. If you have a 500GB hard drive now, you should probably spring for a similarly sized SSD (or larger, to accommodate for future data).

The only exception is if you're on a desktop computer and have room for multiple hard drives. In that case, you could store Windows and your programs on the SSD while putting your music, movies, and other media on a second, larger hard disk.

What You'll Need: A USB-to-SATA Dock

During this process, you'll need both your SSD and your old hard drive connected to your computer at the same time. If you're using a laptop with only one hard drive slot, that means you'll need an external adapter, dock, or enclosure that can connect your bare SSD to your computer over USB. (Again, desktop users may not need this if they have room for two drives inside their PC—you can just install it internally alongside your old hard drive.)

What You'll Need: AOMEI Backupper for Windows

There are many different drive-cloning tools on the market, but when cloning a hard drive to SSD, I recommend AOMEI Backupper, since it's free, easy to use, and takes into account a few quirks that sometimes pop up during clones from hard drives to SSDs.

The free Standard version is fine; there's no need to upgrade to the paid version for what we're doing today. You will need to enter your email and subscribe to the newsletter to get the download link, though. Thankfully, you can just unsubscribe later.

Once you've gathered up those necessities, it's time to get started.

Back Up Your Data (and Free Up Space, if Necessary)

Before you start messing with drives and formatting partitions, it's absolutely necessary to back up your data first. A simple misclick can result in you erasing everything, so do not continue until you've backed up all of your data. If you don't have a backup yet, check out our favorite software for the job—though for today's purposes, copying your important data to an external hard drive will do in a pinch.

If you're upgrading to an SSD that's smaller than your current hard drive, you'll want to take extra care here. This isn't as common as it once was, thanks to bigger, less expensive SSDs, but if that's the case for you, you'll need to delete some files and free up space on your hard drive before cloning it. Otherwise, your data won't fit.

Once your data is safe and secure, continue onto the next step.

Plug In and Initialize Your SSD

Plug your SSD into the SATA-to-USB adapter, then plug that into your computer. If it's a brand-new drive, you probably won't see the drive pop up in File Explorer, but don't worry; it just needs to be initialized first. Open the Start menu and type "partitions" in the search box. Click the "Create and format hard disk partitions" option, and Disk Management will open. It'll prompt you to initialize the drive using either the GPT or MBR partition table.

I'll be using GPT for my SSD, since I have a modern PC with a UEFI firmware. If you have an older PC with a traditional BIOS, you may need to use an MBR partition table. If you aren't sure, look up your specific model of PC or motherboard to see which type of firmware it uses.

If you aren't prompted to initialize the drive, and don't see it in Disk Management, double-check that it's properly connected to your computer, and that the enclosure or dock is powered on (if necessary).

Once the drive has been initialized, you should see the drive show up in the bottom pane of Disk Management as unallocated space. Right-click on it, choose New Simple Volume, and click Next through the wizard to create a new volume taking up the entire drive. It isn't super important what this volume looks like; we just need a volume on the disk for AOMEI to see it. Close Disk Management and continue to the next step.

Clone Your Hard Drive

Open AOMEI Backupper and click the Clone option in the left sidebar. Choose Disk Clone, and select your C: drive as your source disk. Click Next, then click on your SSD to select it as the destination disk—again, be very careful you're selecting the right disk here, since it will be erased and overwritten—and click Next again.

Even if your SSD is smaller than your current hard drive, AOMEI will resize the volume to fit. You shouldn't run into trouble unless your source drive contains more data than can fit on the new SSD.

Finally, you'll be given a summary of the upcoming operation, which you can double-check one last time. Check the SSD Alignment box along the bottom, which ensures you're getting the best performance from your SSD, and click the Start Clone button.

Wait...and Wait, and Wait

This can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on how large the disks are. So go binge-watch some Netflix and come back in a while. When it’s done, click the "Finish" button. You should see your new SSD in File Explorer, complete with all your data.

For Bigger Drives: Extend Your Partition

If your SSD is the same size or smaller than your old hard drive, you should be all done with the cloning process, and you can skip to the next step.

If, however, you upgraded to an SSD with more space than your old drive, you'll need to do one more thing. The Windows volume you copied to your SSD will be the same size as it was on the original hard drive, and you'll need to expand it so it takes up the rest of the disk. The Pro version of Backupper allows you to do this during the clone process, but there's no need to pay—another AOMEI tool called Partition Assistant can do it for free.

Install the free, Standard edition of Partition Assistant and look at the disks along the bottom of the window. You should see that one of your drives—in my case, Disk 2 holding the D: drive—has a bunch of unallocated space at the end. That's our new SSD, and the D: drive (or whatever letter its assigned on your system) is the volume we want to expand. You may see other volumes on the disk—these are boot and recovery partitions, and it's best to leave them intact for now.

Click that volume and select the Merge Partitions button in the sidebar. Check the Unallocated box alongside that D: drive and click OK. You should see the new layout in the AOMEI Partition Assistant window, and you can click the Apply button in the upper-left corner to make the changes.

Install Your SSD

Next, shut down your computer. It's time to install that SSD in your computer permanently. If you have a laptop with only one hard drive slot, you'll need to remove your old hard drive and replace it with your SSD. This is a bit different on every laptop. If you have a desktop PC with more than one hard drive slot, you can leave your old hard drive in as extra storage, and just install your SSD alongside it.

Reboot From Your New Drive

Once you're finished installing the SSD, you'll need to tell your computer to boot from it. (This may not be necessary on laptops with just one drive, but if you experience problems booting, it can help on some PCs.) Turn your computer on and enter its BIOS/UEFI setup—this is a bit different on every PC, but it'll usually say something like "Press DEL to enter setup" on the boot screen, so you'll want to press the corresponding key as it starts up.

From there, look for your BIOS' boot options. These will be in a different spot depending on your computer, but once you find them, you'll want to select the option to change the boot sequence. Choose your SSD from the list as the first boot drive, then head back to the BIOS' main menu to exit, saving your settings.

Your computer will reboot, and if all went well, it should plop you back into Windows faster than ever before. Open File Explorer and check to confirm that your SSD is, in fact, the C: drive. If everything looks good, you're ready to rock, and your computer should feel significantly snappier without having to reinstall a thing.

Posted in: Tips