How to clone a hard drive to SSD: Step by Step Guide + Video

Guide Overview:

The purpose of this guide is to teach you how to clone a hard drive to SSD.

Tools Needed

• Acronis True Image

• Ability to have both original hard drive and new SSD plugged up to same system. Possibly by using a USB to Sata adapter

Instructions

Hey there. Vince here. These instructions will skip the part of creating the bootable Acronis USB. You can see how to do that in the video. Assuming you have already created the bootable USB, let’s begin.

Firstly you need to begin by plugging in the Acronis USB that we have already created and booting the computer to it. After which you will be have the following on your screen.

Now go ahead and plug in your SSD using a USB to Sata adapter. I use one made by Apricorn that works well. From here we want to click on Tools from the left-hand menu and then click on Clone Disk as I have highlighted.

Now we have the option of choosing either Automatic (recommended) or Manual. We’re going to go with Automatic as it involves less steps and is appropriate for most situations.

At this point you want to be sure to pay very close attention to what you are doing. Choosing the wrong source and target could cause data loss. In the example I have selected my normal hard drive as the source disk. The source disk is what you are copying FROM; as in what you want to make a copy of.

Next we need to select the target disk. As you can see I am prompted with three options; one being grayed out. One is the bootable USB of Acronis (mind is labeled as SandDisk Cruzer Blade) and the other is labeled as Apricorn SATAWire; which is my USB to sata adapter. I also see that it has a capacity of 476.9GB. This is the SSD that I want to copy to. Highlight your target disk and click Next. You may be prompted with a warning if your target disk has partitions on it. Be sure you are choosing the correct target disk.

Now we have an overview of what is about to happen. We have selected the source disk as well as the target disk and it shows the layout of what the partitions will be. If you are satisfied with your selection you will now press Proceed to begin the cloning process.

I like to use the option “Shut down the computer when the operation is completed” so that I know if my screen goes black it is done. Entirely personal preference here.

And that’s it! Now you will want to physically replace your HDD (hard drive) with the SSD that you just cloned onto and boot the computer up. Be sure to unplug the bootable USB as well.

Hope that helped! Although I am definitely too busy to provide 1-on-1 tech support for free if there are specific questions I’d be happy to try to answer them.

Edited by VincePolston, 06 December 2016 - 10:29 AM.

Hi,

Nice guide, Acronis True Image is a very good but expensive program for many users.

For those that don't know its possible to use a free (limited but functional) version of Acronis True Image if you have an HDD from Seagate or Western Digital.

- Seagate DiscWizard http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/discwizard/ (for owners of Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung drives)

- Acronis True Image WD Edition Software https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=119 (for owners of WD drives)

Edited by SleepyDude, 05 December 2016 - 11:16 AM.

Thanks @SleepyDude. Good advice on the Seagate and WD editions