How to Clone Your Boot Drive to a New SSD

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Cloning copies everything on your current boot drive (Windows, programs, settings and files) onto a new drive, so you can swap drives and carry on as if nothing happened. It's the fastest way to upgrade to a bigger or faster SSD. Done carefully, it takes an hour or two, mostly waiting.

The alternative is a clean Windows install, which gives you a fresh start but means reinstalling everything. If your current install is slow, cluttered or unstable, a clean install may be better. If it's healthy, cloning saves a lot of time.

What you need

• The new SSD. It must be at least as large as the used space on your old drive. Bigger is fine. See best Gen4 NVMe SSDs.
• A way to connect both drives at once. A second M.2 slot on your desktop, or a USB NVMe enclosure (essential for laptops with one slot).
• Cloning software (see below).
• A USB flash drive if you're using bootable cloning tools like Clonezilla.

Choosing cloning software

• Drive-maker tools: several SSD makers offer free migration software for their own drives. Samsung's Data Migration (through Magician) is the best-known example. Check your drive maker's support page.
• Clonezilla is free and open source. It's powerful and reliable, but its text-based interface is less friendly. You boot it from a USB stick.
• Rescuezilla is a free, graphical front end built on Clonezilla's engine. It's friendlier for beginners.
• Macrium Reflect is a long-standing favorite, but its free edition was retired, and current versions are paid (with a trial).

Whichever you use, read the source and destination screens twice before you click start.

Step-by-step cloning

1. Clean up the old drive. Empty the Recycle Bin, uninstall apps you don't use and run Disk Cleanup. Less data means a faster clone and an easier fit on a smaller drive.
2. Check disk health. Run chkdsk or your drive's health tool. Cloning copies errors too.
3. Connect the new SSD. Install it in a second M.2 slot, or put it in a USB NVMe enclosure and plug it in.
4. Run the cloning software. Select the old drive as the source and the new SSD as the destination. Include every partition, including the small EFI and recovery partitions that Windows needs to boot.
5. Resize the main partition if needed. Most tools let you expand the C: partition to use the new drive's extra space. If yours doesn't, you can extend it later in Disk Management, though a recovery partition placed right after C: can get in the way.
6. Start the clone and wait. Time depends on how much data you have and the connection. USB enclosures are slower than internal slots.
7. Swap the drives. Power down. Either remove the old drive, or leave it installed and set the new drive as the first boot device in the BIOS.
8. Boot from the new drive. Confirm everything works, check that the new capacity shows up, and only then wipe or repurpose the old drive.

If it won't boot after cloning

• Wrong boot order: set the new drive first in the BIOS boot menu.
• Old drive still first: temporarily remove the old drive so Windows can't boot from it by mistake.
• Missing EFI partition: reclone with every partition selected, or use Windows installation media's startup repair.
• BitLocker prompt: have your BitLocker recovery key ready, from your Microsoft account. Some tools prefer that you suspend BitLocker before cloning.
• Storage mode change: if you changed BIOS storage settings, such as RAID or Intel VMD, Windows may not find the drive. Revert or install the right driver.

After a successful clone

Update your SSD's firmware with the maker's tool. Check that TRIM is enabled (it's on by default in Windows) and leave some free space for performance. Turn the old drive into a backup or game drive, or put it in a USB enclosure as portable storage. See best external SSDs for inspiration.

Cloning vs imaging: what's the difference?

Cloning copies one drive directly onto another, so the result is ready to boot straight away. It's the right choice for a drive upgrade. Imaging saves a compressed copy of a drive to a file you can restore later. It's the right choice for backups. Many tools, including Clonezilla, Rescuezilla and Macrium Reflect, can do both. Once your new drive is running, consider making a periodic image of it to a NAS or external drive, so a future drive failure is a quick restore rather than a reinstall.

Gear for cloning