How to Clone 2TB HDD to 1TB SSD with Secure Boot

Can I Clone 2TB HDD to 1TB SSD Successfully?

The answer is YES, you can successfully clone 2TB HDD to 1TB SSD without shrinking disk space or deleting useless files first, as long as you use the best disk cloning software. Except for this situation, some users want to clone 1TB SSD to 2TB SSD but encountering problem. Below are cases for different situations:

♨ Case 1: "My 2TB hard drive is about to failing and I’ve purchased a 1TB SSD to replace it. Plan to clone only used portion of the 2TB HDD (about 470GB) to the SSD. I have tried shrunk the 1.8TB volume size in Disk Management but failed. I’ve tried one cloning software but it does not support copy to smaller disk. Is there any professional tool that could clone only used space of the 2TB drive effectively? Thanks."

♨ Case 2: "I used macrium reflect to clone my 1TB boot hard drive to my new 2TB ssd for my new pc. But after cloning, the available space in the ssd is the same as the original hard drive I cloned. Is there any way to fix it, or better software for cloning?."

What is the best disk cloning software?

The best disk cloning software needs support cloning hard drive with different sizes, for example, clone 2TB HDD to 1TB SSD or clone 1TB SSD to 2TB SSD, and ensure your computer can boot from it successfully. I strongly recommend you AOMEI Backupper Professional, and below are the advantages if it: 

• Support clone disk and ensure secure boot after cloning, even for bitlocker encrypted disk clone.

• Support cloning only used sectors with "Intelligent Clone" feature. 

• Support cloning all partitions to SSD with "Sector by Sector Clone" feature, so you don't need to worry about missing any boot-related partitions, such as, system reserved partition or UEFI partition. 

• Support accelerating the reading and writing speed of SSD disk with its "SSD Alignment" feature.

• Support all kinds of disk, regardless of disk brands (WD, Samsung, Seagate, Dell, etc) and interface (SATA, NVMe, M.2, U.2, etc).

• Support Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista.

• User-friendly. 

In addition, if your computer is not bootable, you can choose to create a bootable USB or CD/VD to clone hard drive without booting Windows. Operation time will be shorter and many potential troubles would be saved that way.

Then, let’s see how to clone hard drive to SSD or another HDD with different sizes on Windows operating systems.

How to Clone 2TB HDD to 1TB with Ease?

Video Tutorial: 

Graphic Tutorial:

1. Install or connect the 1TB SSD to your machine. You may need USB-to-SATA cable on a laptop. Make sure the SSD can be detected.

2. Install and run AOMEI Backupper Professional on your PC. Click Clone and then Disk Clone.

✿ Note: AOMEI Backupper supports cloning data disks and system disks of all brands and partition styles, such as cloning MBR to MBR/MBR to GPT or GPT to GPT/GPT to MBR directly. But you still need to ensure the partition style of the target disk is compatible with your boot mode (MBR for legacy BIOS and GPT for UEFI).

3. Select the 2TB HDD as the source disk and click Next.

4. Select the 1TB SSD as the destination disk and click Next.

5. On the summary page, check the option “SSD Alignment” to improve the performance of SSD. Click Start Clone, then it will start to clone only used sectors in the hard drive and move it to the new SSD. Go get a cup of coffee, or get on with your other work.

Tips:

• "Sector by Sector Clone" : It allows to clone all sectors of a disk to another, whether used or not. It requires the destination disk is equal or larger than the source disk.
• “Edit partitions": It allows you to adjust partition size during the cloning process, so you don't be troubled by cloned hard drive unallocated space left. 
• OS migration: If you just want migrate OS to SSD and use HDD of storage, try "System Clone" feature instead.
• This software also applies to clone 1TB HDD to 500GB SSD, clone 1TB HDD to 250GB SSD, clone 500GB HDD  to 250GB SSD, clone 500GB SSD to 1TB SSD, etc.

After cloning, you still need to check if the cloned SSD boot. Only in this case, you can use it to replace hard drive. Try the following steps:

1. Shut down you PC completely and restart it.
2. Replace the 2TB HDD with the 1TB SSD to boot from the cloned drive. If it does not boor, you can change boot order in BIOS and try again.

In a few cases, you may find the cloned SSD refuses to boot. The reasons are various in different situations, but you can refer to this article for help: cloned hard drive or SSD won’t boot. See if you’re in one of those troubles.

FAQs on Disk Cloning

1. Can I clone 1TB HDD to 500GB SSD?

Yes. You can follow above steps to clone from 1TB hard drive to 500GB SSD easily. No technical skills required.

2. Does cloning a hard drive copy the OS?

If the disk you are cloning is a system disk, the OS will be cloned to the target disk. Normally, cloning a hard drive clones everything on the disk.

3. How do I make a cloned SSD bootable?

To boot from a cloned drive, first you need to make sure there is operating system installed. Secondly, set it to the first boot order in BIOS. You may need to change UEFI from/to Legacy if you clone between MBR and GPT. Still, a hard drive can’t start may result from various factors. Check out the provided link to find out more. 

4. How long does it take to cloning a 2TB hard drive to SSD?

The time varies from several minutes to hours, and it depends on multiple reasons, such as, the amount of data on your disk, the reading and writing of both HDD and SSD, whether there are bad sectors on the disk, etc.

Bottom Line

You see, it is quite easy to clone 2TB to 1TB SSD with one comprehensive disk cloning utility since it takes care of all issues you may concern. As a matter of fact, you can clone 1TB SSD to 2TB SSD by repeating above steps.

After cloning hard drive, it is suggested to keep AOMEI Backupper Professional installed. The cloning software is also reliable backup software which provides you robust backup solution. Let it help you protect your computer in all-round.