How to Clone 2TB HDD to 1TB SSD [Bootable]

🌟 Video Guide: How to Clone 2TB to 1TB

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 qualified disk cloning software. Similarly, you can clone 1TB SSD to 2TB SSD or HDD with secure boot.

However, both scenarios of cloning between disks of different sizes are more prone to errors. Below are 2 cases:

💬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 in Disk Management but failed. Is there any tool that could clone only used space of the 2TB drive effectively? Thanks."

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

In the following article, I will present you a handy tool to clone 2TB hard drive to 1TB SSD or vice versa, and solve the common issues during cloning.

Best Tool to Clone larger HDD to Smaller SSD or Vice Versa

Many tools allow you to perform bootable clone, but not all of them work well in cloning between different sized disks. If you don't want the clone to fail when you migrate to a smaller disk or leave a lot of unallocated space when you clone to a larger disk, AOMEI Backupper Professional is a worthy choice. It handles well cloning 2TB HDD to 1TB SSD or clone 1TB SSD to 2TB SSD with the following advantages:

▪ It have different cloning options: Disk Clone for entire disk migration, Systme Clone for migrating only OS, and Partition Clone for selected partitions.

▪ The default Intelligent Clone mode allows you to copy only used sectors and thereby clone larger drive to smaller drive, such as cloning 2TB to 1TB.

▪ If the target drive is lager, you can also use the Edit Partitions feature to clone and resize hard drive, thus avoid unallocate space and make the full use of the disk capacity.

▪ It also supports cloning all partitions to SSD with Sector by Sector Clone. You don't need to worry about missing any boot-related partitions, such as, UEFI partition or hidden recovery partition.

▪ It has SSD Alignment feature to accelerate the reading and writing speed of the target SSD disk.

▪ It works with all editions of Windows 11/10/8/7/XP/Vista, and supports cloning regardless of disk brands (WD, Samsung, Seagate, Dell, etc) and interface (SATA, NVMe, M.2, U.2, etc).

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.

Download this easy-to-use disk cloning software and have a try.

How to Clone 2TB HDD to 1TB with Ease Step by Step

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

Before you clone larger HDD to smaller SSD, do some preparations first:

• Install or connect the 1TB target SSD to your machine. You may need USB-to-SATA cable on a laptop with only one slot. Make sure the SSD can be detected, if not, you may need to initialize it first.
• Make sure the target drive has sufficient space to accommodate the existing data of the source drive. Otherwise you can uninstall some rarely used APPs or delete temporary files.
• Make a backup of the target SSD if there is any important data, because the cloning process will overwrite the target drive.

Then you can try the steps below to clone 2TB to 1TB.

Step 1. Install and run AOMEI Backupper Professional on your PC. Click Clone and then Disk Clone. If you just want migrate OS to SSD and use HDD of storage, try System Clone feature instead.

✍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).

Step 2. Select source drive you want to clone and click Next. In your case it should be the 2TB HDD.

Step 3. Select the 1TB SSD as the destination disk and click Next.

Step 4. 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 with unallocated space left.
• 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 is bootable. Only in this case, you can use it to finally replace the old hard drive. Try the following steps:

• Shut down you PC completely.
• Replace the 2TB HDD with the 1TB SSD to boot from the cloned drive.
• Restart the computer, if it starts normally, then the cloning is successful.
• You can also insert old hard drive back if you want to use it for storage, but remember to check the boot order in BIOS/UEFI settings, the cloned SSD should be in the first place. Or, you can wipe the old hard drive to free up more space.

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.