Easiest Way to Backup/Clone HDD to SSD via USB

Why is it good to clone HDD to SSD via USB?

Here USB means the USB to SATA adapter, which allows you to connect internal devices that use SATA interface (such as hard drives and SSDs) to your PC by simply plugging them into a USB port, so that you can access the contents of an internal hard drive externally to aid in PC disaster recovery and other scenarios, for example,

You decide to replace your old HDD (hard disk drive) with an SSD (solid state drive). Then you can use an SATA to USB adapter to connect the SSD as an external USB drive and clone HDD to SSD via USB. After you finish clone, just remove the internal HDD and replace it with the SSD.

But if your laptop’s HDD develops a major malfunction and Windows cannot boot up. You can remove the old drive from your laptop, install the new SSD, install Windows on it and then connect your failed HDD with USB as a temporary external drive. In this situation, you still have a decent chance to copy your files from HDD to SSD except that the drive is completely dead.

Considering two situations above, we know that clone HDD to SSD USB is a good way to replace the old hard drive with SSD, as well as backup from HDD to SSD via USB when Windows is no longer boot up.

How to successfully clone HDD to SSD via USB?

In order to clone hard drive to SSD via USB successfully, an SSD cloning software is needed. Here AOMEI Backupper Standard is recommended. It’s a professional cloning software devoted to transferring data from one disk to another. Supports all Windows editions including Windows XP\Vista\7\8\8.1\10. You can easily clone HDD to SSD over USB quickly with its outstanding features.

• Free of charge.

• It lets you clone the entire hard drive or only selected partitions as per your needs.

• It provides sector by sector clone and intelligent clone options. The latter option can help you clone large HDD to smaller SSD because it will only clone the used part.

• Special option “Align partition to optimize for SSD” can improve the reading and writing speed as well as extend SSD’s lifespan.

In addition, AOMEI Backupper has a user-friendly GUI. You can easily finish the job without seeking help from an expert. Now download it on your PC and follow the steps below to clone HDD to SSD over USB in just a few clicks.

Step 1: Install and launch AOMEI Backupper Standard. Select “Disk Clone” under “Clone” tab.

Step 2: Select your HDD as source disk, then click “Next”.

Step 3: Select SSD as destination disk, then click “Next” to continue.

Step 4: In this window, you can preview the operation result. Then, click “Start Clone”.

Notes:

1. "Edit partitions on the destination disk" allows you to resize partitions. Under this option, you can choose "Copy without resizing partitions", "Add unused space to all partitions" or "Manually adjust partition size". The last feature is available in the Pro version. If you are interested in, you can upgrade to AOMEI Backupper Pro to make it.

2. “Sector by sector clone” is optional to copy all sectors of the disk to the destination disk whether in use or not, but the destination disk size must be equal to or larger than the source disk.

3.“Align partition to optimize for SSD” is highly recommend here, for you can tick this option to optimize the performance of the SSD.

Step 5: Wait for the process to complete and then click “Finish”. A disk clone can take several hours depending on the size of the source disk.

Tips: AOMEI Backupper is also a powerful backup software, and when Windows cannot boot up, you can use it to backup from HDD to SSD via USB. Or you can also create bootable disk in advance to help you boot your computer when a disaster happens.

Conclusion

As you can see, AOMEI Backupper can help you clone hard drive to SSD without effort. By the way, it is not only a cloning tool but also an excellent backup tool. It can help you backup the entire hard drive, selected partitions, and selected files. Just give it a try, it can become your best assistant in helping you protect your PC data.