How to Clone Hard Drive to SanDisk SSD in Windows 7, 8, 10, 11

Replace hard drive with SanDisk SSD

Compared with HDDs, solid state drives (SSDs) come with faster startup and read/write speed so that many users want to replace their old hard drive with an SSD. Among all the choices, SanDisk SSD is a popular one due to its outstanding performance and compatibility. 

However, reinstalling Windows 11, 10, 7, etc. and all the apps on the new SanDisk disk can be a headache, not to mention the data that has been collected for a long time. Thus you may wonder, is there a way clone everything on the hard drive to SanDisk SSD.

The answer is yes. You can make an exact copy of the source hard drive, transfer it to the SanDisk drive, and then boot Windows from the cloned SSD. To achieve this, all you need is professional SanDisk SSD clone software.

Does SanDisk SSD come with cloning software?

SanDisk SSD doesn't come with a cloning software, but you can download Acronis True Image for Western Digital, which can back up and clone files, programs, and operating system of a Western Digital disk (WD, SanDisk, G-Technology). This software is available only under a limited time offer and must be redeemed by download and install within 90 days of purchase or by December 31, 2023, whichever is earlier.

Meanwhile, because this product is designed for certain products, it is also limited in its scope of use. It can only be used when a Western Digital storage device is detected on your system. And in actual use, many users reported that the product could not detect the SanDisk SSD connected through an external dock or adapter.

Therefore, it's more recommended to use free and powerful SanDisk cloning software like AOMEI Backupper. It does not only support SanDisk, but also works with any brand of HDDs and SSDs that can be detected by Windows.

The best free SanDisk cloning software

AOMEI Backupper Standard is the best tool for SanDisk to clone HDD to SSD. It’s free but professional, allowing you to clone entire disk, selected partitions or only OS (supported by Pro edition). It is not only a SanDisk clone software, but also supports other brands of SSDs, HDDs, USB drives, NAS, SSHD, etc. 

In practical use, it also has the following advantages:

• Support all Windows editions. AOMEI Backupper can be used in Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10/11.

• Make an exact copy of hard drive and ensure secure boot. Compared with fresh install, the “Clone” feature can avoid reinstalling system from scratch, installed programs and data loss.

• Clone hard drive to SanDisk SSD regardless of disk size. That’s to say, in this software, you can clone hard disk between the same size or different sizes. 

• More useful features included. When cloning disk with the same size, you can use “Sector by sector clone” feature to clone all sectors of your old drive and transfer it to new SSD. Besides, you can maximize the SSDs performance with “SSD Alignment”.

You could hit the download button below to try the freeware, and follow the guide to clone HDD to SanDisk SSD.

Steps of SanDisk clone hard drive to SSD

Before starting SanDisk clone HDD to SSD, you need to connect SanDisk SSD using one of the following two methods:

• Clone HDD to SSD via SATA to USB adapter: If your computer has only one slot, you need an SATA to USB adapter or SSD enclosure to connect the target drive to your PC externally.

• Clone HDD to SSD without SATA to USB cable: If your computer has more than one slot, you can add the SSD as a secondary disk so to clone HDD to SSD without SATA to USB cable.

Then try the following steps for SanDisk data migration:

*By default, this software clones only used sectors and therefore allows you to clone larger HDD to smaller SSD successfully. You just need to make sure the target disk has enough space to hold all the data on the source disk.

1. Install the HDD to SSD cloning software, and launch its main interface.

2. Select Disk Clone under Clone tab.

Note: The Standard edition supports cloning MBR system disks. If you want to clone system disk from GPT to GPT, GPT to MBR or MBR to GPT (such as cloning Windows 10 to NVMe SSD), please upgrade to advanced editions like Professional edition. The Pro edition also allows you to clone only system partition via System Clone.

3. Select the current HDD (here is disk 0) as the source disk, and click Next to continue.

4. Select your SanDisk SSD (here is disk 2) as the destination disk to receive the disk copy. Click Next.

5. Select SSD Alignment to accelerate the target SanDisk SSD, and click Start Clone to continue.

More useful options:

• Edit partitions (available in advanced edition): When you clone to larger disk without adjusting partition size, there will be unallocated space that you cannot use. To make full use of the storage space, you can use this feature to change partition size and assign unallocated space.

• SSD Alignment: This feature is designed for SSDs and can accelerate its reading and writing speed while cloning HDD to SSD.

• Sector-By-Sector Clone: Clone all sectors whether used or not and can keep data security to the greatest extent. If you want to clone the system reserved recovery partition on the source disk and make sure it will work on the target disk, remember to check it.

Wrapping things up

With SanDisk cloning software - AOMEI Backupper, you can easily to clone hard drive to SanDisk SSD. But it’s still can regarded as other branded SSD cloning software, such as, OCZ SSD clone software, ADATA SSD clone software, WD disk cloning sofwtare, M.2 SSD cloner, and so on. And all features mentioned above can be applied to all SSDs.

Need to clone hard drive to SSD successfully without reinstalling, even for a smaller one? Download AOMEI Backupper and then follow the above steps to clone disk.