How To Replace A Hard Drive or SSD Without Losing Data

I'm aware that the program in this video got paywalled. Sorry about that. I'm working on a new video right as another free way to do this. I'll post the link here when it's released. Should be a few weeks. Edit: here's the new video. https://youtu.be/SY052k5bODA

It may be surprising to hear that old PCs are left to recycle (Ewaste) with the hard drives still in them which means their personal data is available for anyone to access. Never leave your personal data available

Nice explanation of both methods. I have used both and others many times over the decades.

This is exactly how I clone drives, works well. The only problem with cloning is you clone all of the issues with Windows with it. Most people just have Chrome, Office, Adobe Reader, and their data. In this case a reload of Windows is cleaner and faster. Cloning might be good for complex systems with a 100 apps on it but would challenge that a reload would generally be faster

I love your videos and I work in the IT industry and your content has been very helpful. I definitely appreciate your honesty to your viewers... Like you said, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

Excellent video and a must-see! Thanks for sharing

The SSD-Alignment has something to do with internal storage. SSD use a page size of 4 / 8 KiB. If you copy from an HDD, that uses a "incompatible" LBS (Logical Block Size), it can happen, that data has to use 2 pages of the SSD instead of just one. This can reduce write performance of small data. (Just a quick overview why you should use the Alignment option when copying from HDD to SSD)

Thanks for the educative content. I always enjoy and learn from each video uploaded.

Works a treat, thanks 👍🏼

I use Macrium Reflect as it lets you manage partition sizes as you do the clone, so no need for a second program. It also properly handles MBR and GPT partition types when you are cloning on a separate system, unlike some programs like Acronis.

Good Video. I generally use an older free version of Mini Tool Partition wizard.9.0 or 10.0 before they took away the closing wizard from the free version. I also use the partiton wizard in Mini Tool as easier to do the partition mods in a windows environment. For disk cloning if neither the source or the target is your current windows drive it will do the clone in windows. If the source is the windows version your are currently booted on the software will bring up a box to reboot into a pre windows environment to do the clone. Have been using this combination for years. Mini Tool partion wizard free version 9.0 seems to work the best for me.

If you keep have to switch between operating systems [win 10 and win 11 in this case] a hot-swap internal disk caddy would be the way to go. One or two bays. That way, you don't need to mess around with BIOS setting for the new system disk, just put the system drive you want in the first [or only] slot and remove and put the other disk aside. BIOS will just look for a system drive, it does not car which one, so long as it has some sort of boot partition, it will boot. You might have to sign in-'register" a Linux or other OS [BSD, etc] drive, but once you have done that, it is all good. This is particularly true of a Ventoy or Rufus portable USB stick/drive. But some BIOSes are fussier than others. Rufus is greater, but Ventoy, is a bit more intelligent, and automatically adds isos to its boot menu, and you can have more than one iso on the stick. For the paranoid, you can burn an OS onto an SD memory card [preferably the fastest you can afford, and with enough space for the OS/install image], because most of these have a little hard [physical] switch which you can set to read/write or 'read only". The obvious advantage here is that no malware can infect the SD disk if it is set to "read only", so you can use "Hiren's boot CD" [or similar] and run an anti-virus program from it to clean a badly infected host system. Of course, you have to do regular updates on the portable OS, particularly for the anti-virus or anti-malware tools, but you do that with a known clean system. USB sticks used to have hard switches on them, but I have not seen any lately. I don't usually waste my time trying to solve malware problems on an infected system, but will run my tools in a change-rooted environment by booting from my CD card.

I've used the Sabrent for M.2 NVMe and it's excellent. For 2.5" SATA I've used Vantec NexStar enclosures. They're well made and come in a variety of models with different interface options for connection to a PC. I've used their bigger brothers for 3.5" desktop drives. Great for housing the drive just replaced for external data storage/transport reuse. The bandwidth of an external 1TB drive walking down a hallway is huge.

Thank You for this video. I was able to move my 256gb (or thereabouts) hdd to 2TB SSD last night. First option worked, did not need the Clonezilla option. System is very fast boot up now.

You can still use the USB to SSD adapter for spin disks with a powered USB hub. That way both drives can be connected to the hub if one of the drives is not the system drive that is being cloned, or the system drive is being cloned using another computer.

I subscribes because of the good information, the clear presentation and the beard, mostly for the beard.

Hey great video, i try to clone my ssd to a new one but when i tried to follow the steps in hbcd no source disk was available to be selected. Thank you for any advice on what you think the problem may be

AOMEI, using it for serveral years, great tool!

Nyc Information Sir G

I also use (Macrium Reflect) for backup/restore/cloning and it just works from Windows 10/11