By Delia / Last update November 1, 2022

About SK hynix SSD

SK hynix is a South Korean memory semiconductor supplier known for DRAM chips and flash memory chips. It entered the consumer SSD market in 2019 with SK Hynix Gold S31, which is a SATA 6Gbps SSD mainly towards gamers. Later in 2020, it also released the PCIe NVMe SSD SK Hynix Gold P31.

If you are planning to replace old hard drive or SSD with SK Hynix SSD, you may be concerned about how to handle the operating system and previous data. In fact, with proper SK Hynix clone software, you can migrate them from the old disk directly without reinstalling.

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Overview for SK hynix SSD migration tool

SK hynix partners with Macrium to provide a data migration tool - SK hynix System Migration Utility. It can quickly transfer Windows OS and user data to SK hynix Solid State Disks (SSD) while auto resizing partitions to fill the cloned disk and aligning them for optimum SSD performance.

You can install the SK hynix SSD to your computer and download this tool from the official page. Then, follow a simple wizard to select the source disk and target disk, confirm the operation and start cloning. Learn detailed steps with screenshots in this user guide.

sk hynix ssd migration tool

SK hynix System Migration Utility failed

In general, this SK hynix SSD migration tool is easy to use and has basic data migration functions. But there are still some complaints mainly about 3 types of issues: SK hynix device cannot be found; system won’t boot from the cloned drive; transfer speed too slow. Here are some representative comments:

“I tried several times to clone my current boot drive but I could not get my system to boot. I kept getting a blue screen saying the application or operating system couldn't be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors.”
“1TB HDD with 4 partitions but with only about total of 150GB used content took over 16 hours to transfer them over to the new 500GB SSD.”
“Had to download somebody else's data migration software because the free SK hynix software kept saying it couldn't find a SK hynix device, even after initializing/formatting the SSD.”

sk hynix system migration utility error

In addition to above issues, a SK hynix disk is required for this SK hynix gold cloning software to function. So if you want to migrate data between other HDDs or SSDs someday, you will need to find another migration tool.

In response to these situations, I would like to introduce another disk clone software with broader application scope and more powerful data migration capabilities as alternative.

Best SK hynix clone software for system or data migration

As technology evolves, people tend to get better performance by replacing hard drives, like from HDD to SSD, SATA SSD to NVMe SSD, etc. In this process, a disk clone software is necessary if you don’t want to lost previous data and reinstall Windows from scratch.

For example, the cloning software AOMEI Backupper Professional is a good choice with its complete cloning features. It works for all Windows OS and all hard drive brands. You can use:

  • Disk Clone to migrate an entire HDD/SSD including the OS and all the data;
  • System Clone for only operating system migration;
  • Partition Clone to copy an individual partition to target disk.

With the intelligent cloning mode, you can copy only used sectors and therefore clone larger HDD to smaller SSD. If the target disk is larger, you can also perform sector-by-sector clone to create an intact copy of the source disk.

Also, you have the SSD Alignment option to accelerate the reading and writing speed of the cloned SK hynix SSD.

clone hard drive

How to migrate hard drive to SK hynix SSD | step by step

Preparations:

♦Delete unwanted files and apps on the old hard drive.

♦Connect the SK hynix SSD to the PC properly. If there’s only one slot, you can connect it via a SATA to USB adapter.

♦Download and install the disk clone software.

Download Free Demo Win 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
Secure Download

👉 AOMEI Backupper supports cloning data disks and system disks of all brands, and allows you to clone MBR to MBR/MBR to GPT or GPT to GPT/GPT to MBR.

Steps to migrate OS and all the data to SK hynix SSD:

Note: The cloning process will overwrite the target disk. If there’s any important data on the SK hynix SSD, please launch the software and go to Backup tab to back it up first.

1. Navigate to Clone tab and select Disk Clone. If you only want to transfer OS to another drive, use System Clone.

Disk Clone

2. Select the source disk and the target SK hynix SSD respectively, click Next to continue.

Select Disk

3. Check the option SSD Alignment to accelerate the writing & reading speed of target SSD, click Start Clone.

Select Destination Disk

Sector By Sector Clone: Copy all the sectors, including the blank and logically bad sectors. You can tick this option when target disk is larger than the source disk.
Edit Partition: Adjust the partition size and drive letter of the destination disk.

Supplement: what is partition style (MBR/GPT) and how to check it

For users who are not familiar with partition style: MBR and GPT are two different disk types for data storage. The partition style of a disk should be compatible with the boot mode of the computer (MBR for Legacy BIOS and GPT for UEFI). There are some relevant factors you should consider:

  • Booting from an NVMe PCIe SSD is available on systems that support UEFI, so an M.2 NVMe disk should be formatted with GPT.
  • Windows 11 requires GPT/UEFI and Secure Boot modes, while Windows 10 does not requrie this.

Before cloning, please confirm what partition style you should use for the target disk, and whether you need to convert it. To check the partition style, try these steps:

Press Win + R to open the Run window -> type "diskmgmt.msc" and hit OK to open Disk Management -> right-click the disk and select "Properties" -> select "Volume" tab -> find the "Partition style", which can be Master Boot Record (MBR) or GUID Partition Table (GPT).

Disk Partition Style

How to boot from the cloned SK hynix SSD

If you won’t use the old hard drive any more, you can directly replace it with the SK hynix SSD, thus the system shall start from it automatically.

If you want to keep the old hard drive as a secondary storage drive, then you can restart the computer, press a specific key (depending on the manufacturer) to enter BIOS, select the SK hynix SSD as the first boot option, then press F10 to save the setting and exit.

boot order

Note if you cloned a SATA drive to SK hynix Gold P31 M.2 NVMe SSD, you may need to change legacy boot mode to UEFI, because a NVMe SSD will only boot in UEFI mode. You could refer to clone SATA to NVMe.

After booting from the cloned SK hynix drive, you could use the Disk Wipe feature of AOMEI Backupper to erase the Windows system partition, or the entire old hard drive.

disk wipe

Summary

If you want to migrate OS and files from old hard drive to SK hynix Gold S31 or P31 SSD, you may need a SK hynix clone software to make things easier. In addition to the official SK hynix migration tool, AOMEI Backupper is also a good choice with its powerful disk clone and system clone feature.

It works on all Windows PCs regardless of the hard drive brands and OS versions. If you are a Windows Server user, you can also use these features with the Server edition, like migrating Windows Server 2016 to SSD.