How Hiren’s BootCD Clones Disks with Its Useful Software

Overview of Hiren’s BootCD and Why You Need It

Hiren's BootCD is a collection of utilities installed on a bootable USB or DVD you can use to troubleshoot issues related to problems with an existing installation of your Windows OS. It contains a number of diagnostic programs such as partitioning agents, system performance benchmarks, disk cloning and imaging tools, data recovery tools, MBR tools, BIOS tools, and many others for fixing various computer problems. It can help you solve problems such as hard disk failure, virus infection, partition, password recovery, and data recovery.

Unfortunately, Hiren’s BootCD has not been updated for a long time. The last official version 15.2 was released in November 2012. Hiren’s BootCD PE was developed by fans of Hiren’s BootCD, it was developed for the new era of computers. It contains the fewest but best free tools, which supports UEFI booting and requires a minimum of 2 GB RAM.

Hiren’s BootCD Clone Hard Drive Method

With the extensive software on Hiren’s Boot CD, you can clone disks on Windows. There are two ways to clone with Hiren’s BootCD. One is to backup and restore through data recovery tool, and the other is to clone through disk imaging tool.

Since Hiren's Boot CD works as a bootable utility, you can't just install it like a standard program. Instead, you must download Hiren’s BootCD ISO file and burn it to a CD or USB device. In this part, I will show you how to clone a disk using Hiren's BootCD.

#1. Download Hiren’s BootCD and Create a Bootable USB

1. Download Hiren’s BootCD ISO file from its official website. Then you need to burn the ISO file to a CD/DVD/USB drive to start your computer. Here I take burning the ISO file to USB drive as an example. Download the free burning software Rufus to help you complete this operation. You can also choose other burning software, such as UltraISO, Nero, BurnAware Free and Free ISO Burner.
2. Insert your USB device and launch Rufus. Perform the following operations one by one

• Select the USB device from the Device drop-sown menu.
• Select FAT32 for the file system.
• Check the Quick Format box, then change the option next to Create a bootable disk using to ISO Image.
• Select the little CD icon next to this box and browse to the location of the ISO file in the Hiren’s BootCD folder.
• Give it a new name if you like, and click Start when ready.

◒ Note: This process will erase all data on the flash drive, so make sure to back up files on USB device as needed before proceeding.

After the process is complete, you will see DONE in the lower left corner of the window. Click Close and you are done-you have installed Hiren’s BootCD on the flash drive.

#2. Clone HDD to SSD with Hiren’s BootCD

After creating Hiren’s BootCD PE drive, you can boot from this media and use its built-in tools to clone the disk on Windows. To boot to the Hiren’s BootCD PE drive you’ll need to change your boot options. I will show you how to boot from Hiren's BootCD and clone HDD to SSD with its help.

1. Restart your computer, when the computer shows the boot screen, press the Esc key to enter the BIOS settings. (Some computers may be Delete, F2, F6, F11 or F12)
2. Navigate to the Boot tab and change the boot order to USB. After the setting is complete, press F10 to Save and Exit.
3. After a while, you will see the Hiren’s BootCD main screen appear.

4. Select Dos Programs to load up some command line utilities. You will see a list including Partition Tools, Recovery Tools, and more. Select Hard Disk Tools from the menu.

5. Then select a hard disk tool to help you clone HDD to SSD. Here I take AOMEI Backupper v6.5.1 as an example. When you enter a dark blue interface, navigate to Clone tab on the left menu and click Disk Clone to clone HDD to SSD. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the next steps.

Tip✍: you can also select other hard disk tools to help you clone disks with Hiren's BootCD. Such as Acronis TrueImage, Lazesoft Disk Image & Clone, Macrium Reflect PE, Runtime DriveImage XML.

Flexible Way to Clone HDD to SSD

If you think using Hiren's BootCD to clone disk is complicated or it’s already outdated, you can directly perform this disk cloning process through the latest AOMEI Backupper Standard - the best free disk cloning software for Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP, including 32 bit and 64 bit.  With its help, you can clone disk within Windows 10 or in the recovery environment by  creating a bootable media and booting from it. And it supports CD/DVD, USB and ISO files options, thus you don't need to burn ISO files if you have any of these devices.

AOMEI Backupper also supports you to create bootable media on your computer to help you successfully boot your computer to the recovery environment for operations in the event of an accident. In addition to its cloning function, you can also use it to backup/restore system and files. This can also help you achieve replication between disks. Let's see how to use it to clone a disk on Windows.

Step 1. Download and install AOMEI Backupper on your computer.

Step 2. Start this software without restarting the computer. Click Clone -> Disk Clone in order.

◒ Note: The Standard version only supports cloning system disks from MBR to MBR. If you want to clone GPT to GPT, MBR to GPT, GPT to MBR, please consider upgrading to advanced editions.

Step 3. Then select the HDD you want to clone as the source disk and click Next.

Step 4. Select the SSD as the destination path to clone the source disk and click on Next.

Step 5. Then click SSD Alignment in the lower left corner of this program to increase the reading and writing speed of the SSD disk. Confirm all other settings and click Start Clone.

Helpful Tips✍:
☑ Sector by Sector Clone: By default, this disk cloning software will only clone the existing data (used sectors) on the disk- Intelligent Clone. If you want to clone all sectors on the source disk, regardless of whether it is used or not, please try sector by sector clone.
☑ Edit partitions: This feature is very useful if you clone disk to larger disk. It can help you adjust the partition size of destination disk and avoid unallocated space after cloning. (You can enjoy this feature at least in AOMEI Backupper Professional)

Summary

After reading this article, you may understand how does Hiren’s BootCD clone disks on Windows. It is a collection of utilities which can help you solve problems such as hard disk failure and data recovery. You must burn its ISO file to a USB/CD/DVD drive before you can use its built-in tools.

After comparison, it’s much simpler to use AOMEI Backupper to clone disks. And this free software has many other useful functions to meet your needs, protecting your computer and data invisibly. With its help, you can perform a bootable clone on Windows 11 easily. Download this freeware and try it now!