How to Clone HDD to mSATA SSD in Windows 11/10/8/7 Easily

Overview of mSATA SSD

The mSATA SSD (Solid-State Drive) used called mini-SATA by the SATA International Organization at the time of its announcement in 2009. However, the “m” no longer stands for “mini”, and the specification is simply called mSATA. It is a low-profile interface connector that enables more effective Serial ATA (SATA) integration in small form factor drives roughly the size of a business card. 

mSATA supports data transfer rate of 1.5 GB/s and 3.0 GB/s for high performance while enabling compact integration in a wide variety of applications for the hard drives and solid state drives. Now mSATA SSDs, Crucial MX200 and Crucial M550/M4, are available from a variety of manufacturers, including Toshiba, Samsung, HP, Intel, SanDisk and Dell.

Why clone HDD to mSATA SSD

Actually, like you can clone HDD to Samsung SSD, you can clone HDD to any SSD that you have got. Cloning HDD to SSD has several advantages due to the merits of SSD comparing to traditional hard drive. The most significant improvement of cloning HDD to mSATA SSD is to improve the speed of reading and writing, so as to the work efficiency. 

People who is fond of installing dual-system would like to clone hard drive to mSATA SSD in Windows 11/10/8/7. Nevertheless, whatever situation you are under, you need to find out how to clone HDD to mSATA SSD.

How to clone disk to mSATA SSD

To make it clear, you cannot “clone” anything with the help of Windows tool, backup utility or Disk Management. Thus, choosing one third party software is unavoidable. But you need to consider a few things before you choose one. This software should support aligning partitions to optimize SSD since your target disk is mSATA. 

In addition, it should provide options for you to choose whether clone every sector on the HDD or not. Your mSATA SSD may be smaller than HDD, so you have to clone only used part instead of cloning the entire disk.

AOMEI Backupper Professional, the powerful cloning software, takes care of all of that. It will clone used part only by default, and therefore allowing you to clone larger drive to smaller drive. If you would like an intact duplication of HDD, you can check sector-by-sector clone at the last step of disk cloning, in which you can also realize aligning partitions to optimize SSD. 

Download this software and follow steps below to clone disk to mSATA drive now.

*Clone features in free trial can only be demonstrated. Please upgrade for full functionality.

Tutorial: Clone to mSATA with AOMEI Backupper

Backup files that matter a lot in case you lose it by inappropriate operations. Connect mSATA SSD with your computer via SATA to USB cable or SATA case.

Step 1. Install and start SSD cloning software - AOMEI Backupper. Click Clone, and select 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).

Step 2. Select HDD as the source disk.

Step 3. Select mSATA SSD as the destination path.

Step 4. Check Align partition to optimize for SSD box, and click Start Clone.

Tips:

• If you need to clone every aspect of the old HDD, make sure to check Sector By Sector Clone box.

• You are allowed to fit all partitions to entire disk by clicking Edit partitions on the destination disk. 

• If you cannot boot from the cloned SSD, try changing the boot sequence in BIOS or disconnecting the HDD and boot again.

Summary

Clone HDD to mSATA SSD is as easy as clone HDD to other brand of SSD. If your mSATA SSD is larger than HDD, then you are likely to get unallocated space after cloning. Make sure to make good use of it. 

AOMEI Backupper is able to clone SSD to SSD. It is also all-around Backup & Restore software that allows you to backup system and restore system, backup/restore disk, backup/restore partition, and synchronize files. Command line clone takes up less PC RAM and allows you to perform unattended tasks. 

For advanced users, AOMEI Backupper Professional and AOMEI Backupper Server are better choices. Both of them supports command line backup, restore and clone. The second one is dedicated backup solution for Server users.