How to Do System Clone in Windows 10 without Reinstalling OS

Why Need System Clone in Windows 10?

System clone, also known as system migration, is the process of creating a bootable and intact copy of Windows 10 to another disk. It is quite common among today's computer users, mainly due to the following two scenarios：

• Low disk space: With time goes by, the free space of a hard disk will become less and less due to the installed apps, temporary files, caches, etc. Sooner or later, you will be warned with low disk space.
• Poor performance: Computer hardware is updated quickly, an old hard drive that is still functioning may have a hard time keeping up with the demands of new apps and games. Therefore, you may want to replace your system drive with a new SSD to improve performance.

In these cases, many users choose to upgrade hard drive in Windows 10, 11 to a larger drive or an new SSD. But if you don't want to follow the traditional way (install Windows 11 from scratch and migrate the important data over), system clone is the best way to go. It eliminates the need to reinstall Windows 10 and allows you to quickly use the familiar system on the new disk. All the data you need can also be cloned over together.

Best Windows 10 System Clone Software - AOMEI Backupper

To clone OS in Windows 10 easily and quickly, then powerful cloning software AOMEI Backupper Professional can be a good choice. It provides System Clone and Disk Clone features to help you clone Windows 10 system or entire disk in an intuitive GUI. No specialized expertise or complex operations are involved.

System Clone: It will auto detect system-related partitions and copy them to the target drive securely. System customized settings, personal files and installed apps on the system drive will be copied to the target as well.
Disk Clone: It enables you to clone the whole hard drive with the OS and all the data to the new hard drive. And the Intelligent-Sector Clone mode makes it’s possible to clone larger drive to smaller SSD.

Cloning features in AOMEI Backupper will allow you to boot up your computer and run the system & programs without reinstalling Windows 10. In addition, with the user-friendly interface, you can complete Windows 10 system clone job with no effort. Keep reading to get the detailed steps.

How to Clone Windows 10 System to SSD or HDD with Simple Steps

First, install or connect the target hard drive to your computer. Make sure it is detected. Then, install and run AOMEI Backupper Professional. Now follow the guidance below to clone system drive in Windows 10 via AOMEI Backupper:

As mentioned, AOMEI Backupper enables to clone hard drive to SSD, or clone only operating system to new drive without reinstalling. Which one you choose depends on whether you want to migrate all the data on your hard drive. If you only want to transfer system files and use the new drive as boot drive, then System Clone is the easiest answer.

Here‘s a video tutorial to help you make the decision:

Step by step to clone system or disk in Windows 10/11 (bootable):

Step 1. Click Clone and select System Clone. To clone entire hard drive to SSD or another HDD, select Disk Clone.

Step 2. This software will select system partition(s) as source automatically. So just choose the destination partition and then click Next to continue.

✍ Notes:

• Please select the first partition or area as the destination location for system; otherwise, you can’t boot up Windows 10 system from the target disk.

• If there are data on the destination partition, all the data will be overwritten or deleted during the cloning process. Please backup important files beforehand.

Step 3. Click Start Clone to begin system clone progress after you confirm the source and destination partitions.

>> Make full use of disk space: Extend the size of your system partition automatically.
>> SSD Alignment: If the destination disk is an SSD, check this option to improve its performance.
>> Sector By Sector Clone: It will clone all the sectors on the system partition(s), even when they are blank or logically bad sectors. If you want to copy system reserved recovery partition as well, it's suggested to take Disk Clone way and check this option to make sure it can work on the new drive.

Step 4. When the progress gets 100%, please click Finish to exit the interface.

✍ Tip: To boot up Windows 10 from the cloned drive, you can either change boot order in BIOS or replace the old hard drive with the new drive.

How to boot into Windows 10/11 from the cloned drive

When the cloning is complete, you can shut the PC down to replace the old hard drive with the new one, and then boot from it. Note that if your PC has more than one slot, you can also keep the old hard drive connected and do the following:

1. Restart the computer, press the required key (could be DEL, F2, F12, etc.) to enter BIOS. The specific key depends on the manufacturer and model, which you can directly search in Google.

2. Set the new hard drive as the first boot option, then press F10 to save the change and exit.

If your computer boot from the new drive successfully, it means the system clone is successful. Then, you are free to decide what to do with the old hard drive. You can either discard it or keep it as a secondary storage device. AOMEI Backupper also integrates a disk wipe feature to help you clean a hard drive completely.

Conclusion

As you can see, AOMEI Backupper offers you an easy way to perform system clone in Windows 10. Besides, AOMEI Backupper is not only specialized cloning software for Windows 10 but also powerful backup & restore software. It can help users to backup Windows 10 to external hard drive, make an event-triggered scheduling backup, and perform universal restore to dissimilar hardware, etc.

All Windows PC operating systems including Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP are supported by AOMEI Backupper Professional. If you are running Windows Server, please turn to AOMEI Backupper Server.