#Clone hard drive external ssd how to#

This is how to clone a hard drive to a USB external drive in Windows. Wait for the cloning process to complete, and then click Complete.

I’ve had to restore my PC from scratch a few times (normally because I bought a new system) and it takes me 2-3 hours to get back to exactly where I was. If you are sure that the data on the target disk has been backed up, click OK to continue. I just make backups of my personal files and documents, anything I can’t easily download. Restoring from an image takes FOREVER, much longer than just doing a reinstall, not to mention all the time and effort you go to creating the image in the first place. These days you can install a fresh copy of windows 10 in about 20 minutes on a fast PC, and the rest of your stuff can be redownloaded in a couple of hours on a fast internet connection. Most of the data on your computer is very easily re-downloaded from the internet or installed from USB when you install windows.Ĭhrome bookmarks and extensions? Synced to your google account.īacking up your entire boot drive to an image was very popular 10-15 years ago when an entire OS reinstall could take days, and all your software was on discs and CDs that took an age to read etc.

So due to windows restriction, the clone won't ever be bootable?Īnd to be brutally honest, disk imaging in 2021 is a total waste of time. If you clone your system disk to a USB connected external drive then, to boot your clone the physical disk must be removed from the USB caddy and attached to your Motherboard SATA port. You can clone to a hard drive installed in your computer or to a hard drive installed in a USB hard-drive Caddy. But Windows cannot boot from a USB connected drive this is a restriction imposed by Windows. When you Clone a hard drive, you can boot from the target disk on the same system with the state of your computer at the time you undertook the clone.

Clone hard drive external ssd