How to Clone a Hard Drive to a New SSD for a Faster Computer
Do you find your computer slow? What if you could speed it up by swapping the storage device with a faster one? Did you know it is easy to clone your data to an SSD to keep it intact? All it takes is a few steps and some time.
The Speed Advantage of Using an SSD
Hard disks are partly mechanical devices and work using motors. The motor spins the magnetic disks inside them, and a head moves over the disk surface to read the data. They are slow to read and write data because of the moving components. In contrast,SSDs are fully electronic devices with no moving parts. SSDs use flash memory chips and are more like non-volatile RAM. This makes SSDs very fast compared to hard disks.
A quick comparison of the disk speed tests of both devices shows the difference. Regular hard disks read/write around 100 Mbps; the quickest will do 300 Mbps.
SSDs connected to the same SATA interface read/write at around 500 Mbps.
There are also newer storage devices like M.2 NVMe, which use PCIe lanes,like PCIe 3, PCIe, and PCIe 5. They outclass even the fastest SATA storage devices. They read/write in excess of 3000 Mbps, with the best reaching speeds of up to 12,000 Mbps.
The processor and RAM are very quick compared to the hard disk. With data coming in slow, the faster devices are data starved. This is indicated as IO Wait in Linux OS. The best way to speed things up is to upgrade the hard disk with an SSD.
How Does Your Operating System Benefit From Faster Storage?
If you observe the speed tests closely, the 1M chunks are that of the larger files on the disk. The 4K chunks are the smaller files which are OS files, browser data and a few other files. These smaller files are frequently used compared to larger files. The SSD is many times quicker when compared to a hard disk in reading and writing these files. Hence, there will be a huge gain in the overall speed, and your computer will feel way quicker when the OS is on an SSD.
Also, the seek time of an SSD is around 1ms compared to the 20ms for a spinning HDD. This is a huge advantage for the SSD. Lower data latency results in a very responsive computing experience.
An SSD for the OS is, therefore, an ideal option. When you plan to use an SSD, it is easier to clone the HDD to a new SSD instead of migrating all your existing data. It takes less time too.
How to Clone Disks Without Using a Computer
The simplest way to clone the disk is with adual HDD/SSD dock. Almost every dual dock has a cloning function built in. Insert the HDD into the Source bay and the SSD into the Target bay. Long press the clone button, and the process will start. The time to clone the drive will depend on the capacity of the source HDD.
How to Clone Your Hard Disk to an SSD Using Clonezilla
Clonezilla is free and is OS-independent drive cloning software.
Before proceeding, you will need a cable or adapter to connect the new SSD to your machine; your existing hard disk is already connected.
It is fairly simple if you are using a desktop. Find a spare SATA cable (or buy a new one) and attach the new SSD. If you are going with an M.2 NVMe drive, fit it in the slot on your device’s motherboard.
The process becomes more complex when you want to clone a drive on a laptop, as they usually have only one SATA cable, which is already occupied by the existing HDD. To do so, you need aUSB to SATA adapter. If you use an M.2 NVMe, fit it in the slot.
Given a choice between SATA SSD and M.2 NVMe drive, go for the latter. It is much faster for a negligible price difference.
1. Download and Burn Clonezilla
First,download the Clonezilla ISO image.
Next,write the ISO image to a USB stickusing software such asRufus. The software can create bootable USB drives. Rufus, in particular, can create bootable drives compatible with UEFI BIOS.
2. Connect Your New SSD and Enter the BIOS
Connect the new SSD to the machine with the to-be-cloned hard disk. Remember that your SSD must have a larger capacity than the hard disk. Use a SATA port, USB to SATA Adapter, or M.2 NVME slot, depending upon your machine.
Connect the bootable Clonezilla USB pen drive, and power on the machine.Enter the BIOS settings using F2 or DEL keys(depending on your BIOS). Set the BIOS to boot from the USB pen drive first. Save and exit BIOS.
Your computer will restart and boot into Clonezilla.
3. Use Clonezilla to Clone Your SSD
Once you are in, Clonezilla will show you various options to clone disks.
If you’re on a tight budget andyou can afford either new RAM or an SSDbut not both, you should go for the SSD first.
How to Expand Drive Partitions to Cover the Additional Disk Space
Clonezilla has copied the partition table as-it-is. Hence, your new partition sizes are the same as the hard disk earlier. But the SSD has additional unallocated space, which you can use by expanding the partitions.
You do this by using the Disk Management application on Windows.
On Linux, you can use the Gnome Disk Utility to expand the partitions.
SSDs Are the Way Forward for Your OS Drives
Except for the price per GB of disk space, SSDs outperform hard disks in every department. SSDs have lower latency, higher throughput, and more capacity. They are also more reliable due to their improved controller and algorithms. Clone your hard disk to an SSD, and reap the benefits of speed.
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