How to Clone C Drive on Computer?

Quick Navigation:

• 1. Why Copy C Drive to External HDD?
• 2. Preparation to Clone Your C Drive
• 3. Clone C Drive with DoYourClone
• 4. Conclusion
• 5. FAQs about Cloning C Drive

It's important to clone your C hard disk to a new one if you see any signs of failure. To replace a hard disk without losing your data or configuration settings, you can clone it by copying everything from the old drive to the new one.

But copying isn't as easy as dropping and selecting. You must use specialized software and perform a few setup procedures to get the most out of your new hard drive. This article's subject is how to clone an existing C hard drive onto a new drive successfully.

Why Copy C Drive to External HDD/SSD?

Everyone knows that the C disk is where you place your Windows installation and where your computer boots up from. This computer partition serves an essential function. The operating system can be copied to an external hard disk by cloning the C drive. When and why is this procedure necessary? The following is a synopsis of several such instances.

You want to move the OS from the hard drive to the solid-state (SSD) and use the larger SSD as the primary boot device. The old HDD can serve as a data disk in the meantime. You can now increase the computer's processing speed and storage capacity.

If it randomly stops working, you can upgrade your computer by copying the C disk to a new drive. That means it can skip reinstalling Windows or any other necessary programs.

A new hard drive is recommended if your device has been heavily used for a long period and several programs are stored on the C disk. To make a new hard disk work like an old one, you must clone the system drive to the external one.

When the C drive is full and no enough free space on the drive, you can clone the drive and move to a larger disk directly without reinstalling the operating system.

By cloning the C drive, you can easily move the operating systems, programs, system settings, and all your personal data to another drive. It can help you reuse the system smoothly like before without reinstalling system, programs, or reconfigure the settings.

Preparation to Clone Your C Drive:

There are a few things you need to do in advance of cloning your drive. Equipment you don't already have may need to be borrowed or purchased.

What You'll Need

Another drive large enough to hold all your data. The first disk must include your operating system and data, while the second drive will serve as the clone. Ensure the destination drive has room for the cloned data and any additional files you may create.

Way to connect your drives. You should not worry about this if you are adding a second hard disk to your computer. To connect your new drive to your computer for cloning, you'll need an adapter or external dock if you don't already have one.

Power source. If you're copying from a laptop, ensure the power is on. You don't want your battery to die in the middle of cloning, which can take a while if you have a lot of data.

Boot the new HDD/SSD. When the PC has finished restarting:

• To access Disk Management, go to Computer Management in the menu bar. The Initialize Disk choice is now available.
• Choose the disk and partition method (MBR or GPT).
• To finish setting up, select OK from the menu. In addition, you'll need to format the disk and assign it a new volume.

Also, to clone the C drive smoothly and successfully, it's crucial to to choose a trusted disk cloning software. With the professional disk copy tool, you ensure to create a complete and bootable clone for your C drive. There are many disk clone tools available, such as:

• DoYourClone: A reliable software that can clone C drive or entire system disk on PC. The software can guarantee the cloned drive is bootable with exact copy of your C drive.
• AweClone: It's another easy-to-use software that can help clone C drive or any other drives, including SSD, HDD, USB flash drive, external drive, memory card, etc.
• Donemax Disk Clone: With simple and easy understanding interface, the software Donemax Disk Clone is designed to clone hard drive effective for both Windows and macOS users.

Clone C Drive with DoYourClone

DoYourClone is a powerful yet easy-to-use disk cloning program. It can quickly clone C hard drive partition to another hard drive, or clone entire C disk drive to an external hard drive, creating a bootable clone backup. For example, follow the steps below to clone C disk drive to an external SSD.

Step 1. Download and install DoYourClone on your computer and open it. Connect the external SSD to your computer.

Step 2. DoYourClone will list all disks and external devices on your computer. Select the C disk as the source disk and select the external drive as the destination disk. Click Next.

Step 3. Tick "Check the option if the destination is SSD" option if the destinatin drive is an SSD. Also, if you can resize the destination drive if you want. Or just keep the default settings.

Step 4. After confirming the settings, you can just click on Clone button to clone the C drive to the external drive.

It will take some time to clone the disk. If the disk is big, it will sure to take more time and just wait patiently. After the cloning process is finished, the software will show the completion information.

Once it's done, you can open the cloned disk and then check if the cloned files are intact on the destination drive. Also, you can verify if the cloned drive is bootable:

1. Restart the computer and then press "F2", "Del", or any other key based on your computer mainboard to get into the BIOS.
2. Check and find the option to change the boot sequence. Ensure to choose the cloned drive and select it as the first boot device.
3. Press F10 key to save the settings an restart the computer. Then the computer will boot up normally from the clone drive if the cloning process was successful.

Conclusion:

With the help of DoYourClone, cloning C: to an SSD in Windows 11/10/8/7 is a breeze, allowing you to maximize your SSD's potential. The fact that it clones only the used sectors by default makes it much simpler to transfer an operating system from a larger HDD to a smaller SSD. It also can clone system drive on a Mac and create bootable clone backup for macOS.

FAQs about Cloning C Drive

1. Common reasons for C drive cloning on PC?

There are some reasons for users to clone C drive. For example, it's needed to clone C drive in the following scenarios:

• The C drive is failing and working abnormally.
• Space of the C drive is using up and need to replace with a larger one.
• Improve the computer performance by replacing C drive from HDD to SSD.
• Clone the C drive as a backup in case the C drive damaged.

2. Best disk cloning software for PC.

DoYourClone

AweClone

Donemax Disk Clone

3. Steps to clone C drive with DoYourClone.

You can follow the steps below to clone drive smoothly with DoYourClone:

• Download and install DoYourClone on your PC.
• Connect the new drive to the PC and ensure the drive is initialized.
• Start the software and choose "Disk Clone" mode.
• Choose the C drive as the source drive.
• Select the new drive as the destination drive.
• Configure the settings and then click "Clone" button to start cloning.

4. What to do if the cloning process is failed?

There are some issues that will cause the disk cloning process failed. You can do as follows to troubleshoot and try to clone again:

• Check and ensure the destination drive connected stably. If there are issues with the connection, change a cable and USB port to have a try.
• Ensure there is enough space on the destination drive to hold all data cloned from the C drive.
• If the there are issues with the C drive, you can tick "Sector by sector clone" and try again.
• Close all the other running programs on the PC to ensure the disk cloning process work smoothly.