Migrate Windows to Another SSD Drive For FREE

[@theahmadhiwa]

Crazy how I just got a new NVMe drive for my OS and immediately got this video recommended.

[@erickromero7436]

Shhh they are always watchin

[@cameronrhodes7390]

if you think that is funny go on a car site for a couple of days and the you get car ads

[@ashuradevilborngaming9924]

They always will

[@aliens4143]

I didn't, and I searched all the time for free methods, also asked AI. Nothing is free anymore (even if it always says so). But now finally I clicked on the right suggestion.

[@surizanjohari]

its from your phone. remember, youtube is also google. so, google listens everything you say from your phone mic. from that, it collects any data that they could use for ads or etc.

[@DakotaHoll]

I have been watching your channel for years and years because I have always loved fiddling with computers. As I've gotten older my computers have gotten more and more expensive, so I always check your channel first before I make any decisions, so thank you for your content.

[@freespeechadvocate7492]

Ive used this software before and its the easiest software for migration. Went from a 256gb gen 3 to a 1 TB gen 4 SSD, both were already inside my PC in separate NVME slots.

[@Britec09]

Yeah, works a treat

[@francoisleveille409]

Yeah but this comes from China. Is it hidden malware ?

[@francoisleveille409]

Keep removing my comment and ... destroying your reputation.

[@eluhde2214]

@@francoisleveille409?

[@Kingzgamingandrealtalk]

Thank you so much, this was the message I was exactly looking for.

[@ahmedsalah7474]

Hands down the best source/video to explain the OS migration process in an easy straight forward way without much hassle! and I have searched a lot and other sources/videos are very confusing! Thanks man.

[@neil4089]

I have been struggling with this process recently but this program is the first I’ve used that is actually free and simple to use. Thank you for the video, it worked perfectly upgrading my SSD to a larger one 👍

[@schroedingersdog7965]

Excellent! Very clear and simple. Thanks, Brian!

[@Britec09]

Glad it was helpful!

[@dougtravins9624]

Awesome Brian. This is what I've been looking for.

[@gummy_fresh1968]

Cheers bri, this came at the perfect time. 🎉

[@Britec09]

You're welcome

[@fvrrljr]

AOMEI user here, downloaded DiskGenius *Thanx Britec*

[@esasan]

Omg thank you this is the video ive been looking for. All other tutorials sounds to complicated this the first the a bot like me understands cheers

[@ourvdo549]

Just recently discovered and subscribed. You sir are a wealth of useful information and I have recommended your website/channel to many friends. Thank you!

[@jozefff7911]

Awesome! I tried other videos but at the end I had to pay every time for the operation . Thanks a lot!

[@haldavnekar]

Good video as usual and timely. Wanted to save my 2010 laptop, which still runs good. I am going to guess, the operations are the same for non-OS drives' cloning. Off the topic, have you had a chance to make a video for Windows 11, similar to your "Things you need to disable in Windows 10 right now"? I liked the one stop shop explanation and has helped all my Win 10 pcs run effectively and efficiently.

[@Britec09]

I make a video for you

[@zechssiguro7476]

​@@Britec09Great Concise video for Disk Genius! My two questions are, if you have a 64bit system, should you obviously look for the 64bit disk genius?! & 2nd should 1 always expand the cloned "bigger" drive to the full volume or width for best migration?

[@geojohnson5613]

Thanks for the video Brian. I have used Acronis to upgrade several computers from old mechanical drives to new SSDs. They are always amazed at the speed increase. I use the Acronis software to do daily backups as well. Their tech support is excellent too, I would add.

[@Britec09]

Acronis become bloated

[@geojohnson5613]

@@Britec09 Brian, I would not say that it has become bloated. They have added additional features such as antivirus / anti-malware. These added features are optional when Acronis is initially installed. Even the ransomware protection can be toggled off. I only use Windows Security with the Premium Malwarebytes so I elected not to install the additional programs. It's still one of the best backup solutions available.

[@kaileabarca7868]

Thank you for this video! I already installed and clone everything in my new SSD!

[@kaileabarca7868]

Im having issue now. I deleted everything where I cloned. And now I can’t open my pc with an error. I need help

[@t0mn8r35]

Another very useful video. Thank you Brian!

[@Britec09]

My pleasure!

[@LuiV57]

Out of all the videos I seen this is the best I watched everyone else taxing

[@Not-Only-Reaper-Tutorials]

Nice so I can change the SSD with a bigger one without the need to reinstall everything.

[@Britec09]

Yes, that is correct

[@francoisleveille409]

Yeah but this was made in China. Is there malware hidden in this software ?

[@armyspy9797]

@@francoisleveille409 who cares it works

[@francoisleveille409]

@@armyspy9797 You're going to care if you have a business and all your creations are stolen or erased.

[@charlesabju907]

​@@francoisleveille409 never had an issue with chinese ssds, not nearly as risky as installing pirated software or poking the wrong e-mails or websites

[@gamerkulam]

This is exactly what i needed! Thankyou. so much! 🙏👏🔥

[@ViperShane87]

Thank you so much for this video! Made the process seamless. Much appreciated.

[@rogerbowen5753]

I did get Disk Genius with a view to doing exactly what the video suggests. Then, all the hoo ha around 24H2 piled in so I went the custom .iso route instead. Cloning would have allowed me to keep my existing Windows license (One advantage of a Microsoft account, which I had when I switched my email account from Hotmail to Outlook.), but hey, it is what it is and one way or another I'll have Windows the way I want it when I eventually build my new PC.

[@Britec09]

Thanks for sharing

[@wavemaker54]

My favorite way to backup my PC. If something catastrophic happens to your computer all you have to do is replace the drive.

[@normanwhite2227]

Absolutely! same here.

[@crusifur]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS VID I don't know why, but cloning via Macrium give me a bluescreen error. Hell I even tried to install Windows 11 fresh directly on my new SSD through Rufus, some important drivers were missing. Did the same via thumb drive, encountered the same issue where important drivers were still missing. Spent half a day trying to get it to work and your video worked wonders on first try! Once again thank you so much for uploading this 🙏

[@6056aamirusmani]

Super clear explanation. Free tools. Thank you for this awesome video 🎉🎉.

[@johnpedersen8387]

Great tool. Thanks Brian for video. 🙂

[@Britec09]

You are very welcome

[@alexanderpw_]

Excellent! Work easy and free, thankyou!👏🙏

[@inappropriatejohnson]

Thank you........I miss free Macrium and this might help.

[@Britec09]

You're welcome

[@Drottninggatan2017]

Just a note, You can still use the last free Macrium Reflect version. It works perfectly fine.

[@CaptainAdmiralMango]

Nice, simple and easy guide, thank you! Liked & Subscribed

[@hotmixer2010]

Macrium reflect is the best disk cloning program ever

[@travisduxbury]

Thank you Mate, you just saved me some money and time, Greatly appericated

[@mobiletuner]

Thanks, worked perfectly! I was a bit confused when the new drive wasn't available for boot in BIOS, turns out my motherboard has separate boot order settings for UEFI hard drives and I had to go there to choose the proper drive.

[@Revolverben190]

THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!!! It freaking works 😎

[@johngoard8272]

Thanks Brian this is something that I have been thinking of for some time now - cloning my 500GB PCIe express to a new 1TB PCIe express drive, and in the last I have used Macrium and AOMEI for doing this and frankly Macrium has never ever worked properly for me, and AOMEI has always been very "touchy" to use. Now I am assuming that I can clone to an external drive enclosure of course because the machine I am on is a one drive slot laptop? But anyway this software is the ducks guts by the looks of it and thanks again for a great tutorial as it is so easy to follow and by the looks of it to use this method😃😃👍👍👍👍

[@Britec09]

Let me know how you get on

[@johngoard8272]

@@Britec09 Ok will do mate but it will jot be for a while yet though.

[@D.P.G]

I download the Acronis cloning tool from the WD site. If it doesn't find a WD drive in the system then plug in a Sandisk USB stick to keep it happy. It's ridiculous that Microsoft don't have a tool to do this.

[@Salim-px8bm]

Thanks so useful 😄

[@Britec09]

You're welcome 😊

[@Mr.Jivefunk]

groovy. just got a larger drive for windows and side programs. 500g to 1 TB, and then moving my games from that 1Tb to a 2Tb. Reformat the 1TB to drop my cloned windows 500g to it. use the 500g....somewhere else...lol Glad i saw this video. thanks

[@Jadaxy417]

Thanks for the help brother man!

[@tubeDude48]

I prefer EaseUS Disk Copy. It takes less steps, and was worth the price!

[@ragnos28]

Upgraded from a 250Gb to 1T SSD, I can testify that it works. Hell, I even recovered the tabs I had open in my browser prior of performing the migration. 😁

[@Creeper50DJ]

You did Hot migrate?

[@ragnos28]

@@Creeper50DJ Yes. Put the replacement SSD on a external rack, perform the migration, replace the old SSD with the new one and boot. When the boot from the new SSD was successful and all was ok (like I said, I even open the browser with the tabs intact), I've format the old SSD and now it serves as external storage.

[@Creeper50DJ]

@@ragnos28 yeah I went home on my break from work and the hot migrations wasn’t able to get a snapshot but I threw it in Windows PE and it was migrating fine when I left home. I’ll be back soon enough to see if it was successful

[@ragus3321]

Hey Brian, very usefull video, just had some questions. So, firstly, at 4:36 you extended the "system partition size" from 63.1 GB to the maximum size of the target disk. Why did you do this? I don't understand the point of extending the amount that will be clonded beyond the size of the source disk, since the amount that can be cloned can only go as high as the source disk. Is this something that is necessary when cloning the drive? Second, after cloning the drive and replacing it (with the target drive that was just cloned onto) for an upgrade, is it necessary to go into my system BIOS and change the computer boot sequence, or will the system automatically boot the correct drive (Have the correct boot order/sequence) since it's in the same slot? Thanks!

[@kw0064]

Because if you do, you'll have the whole new drive's space as your OS drive. If not, you'll need to create a new partition with the remaining empty space and use that as another logical drive.

[@ragus3321]

@@kw0064 Ok, so it is necessary to extend the system partition size of the target disk, but what about my other question? Is it necessary to change the computer boot sequence in the system BIOS when replacing the cloned drive?

[@kw0064]

@@ragus3321That's already been explained clearly in the video.

[@garrymcgaw4745]

Thanks Brian that was very helpful.

[@Britec09]

Glad it was helpful!

[@juanroldan4379]

Thank you! I need to do this to my daily driver.

[@yaywoohoohooray]

Btw: you don’t need a bigger drive, just a drive that can fit everything from your old one.

[@Rob-vf7zk]

Perfect timing on this video doing this now. Question for you, I'm migrating from a 500GB SSD to a 2TB M.2 SSD, I'd like to still use that SSD for some additional storage afterwards. how would I go about wiping that drive?

[@Britec09]

Just wipe your old drive once cloned and working

[@dingokidneys]

Once you've moved over to the new M.2 SSD, let the system run for a few days to make sure that all is good and you really don't need to go back to the old SSD. This may be overkill, but safe is better than sorry. Then using Disk Management you can repartition and reformat the old SSD how you like. Be very careful that you are working on the right disk as there is essentially no going back from a repartition/reformat. Lost data is a bad feeling.

[@OutofDarkness_jik]

Thank you for your video. I may well have not understood one step: You showed us that on this occasion you were not allowing DG to change the bootable disc. However after your reboot when you went into Disk Manager you showed it had already switched to a different bootable drive. So how did you make the cloned drive the bootable drive? I know there is the option in DG to automatically do this but in your example you didn't select that option. Thanks.

[@p-k98]

Hi Brian, Thanks for the video. I just wanted to ask whether using Minitool Partition Wizard is still okay ?? I followed your video on that (which was published 1 year ago) and, after starting the OS cloning/copying process, I later found this video which is quite recent comparably. So, just wanted to confirm with you once.

[@spaceiswater6539]

I have a windows computer DAW, if I would keep cloning it as a back up would you recommend this software or some other one?

[@glubrix]

Diskgenius makes incremental backups, in case of problems with your DAW, you restore everything from the backup. Certainly there are other software that do incremental backups, but Diskgenius is easy to use

[@nexso]

I use Rescuezilla, a live distro Linux.

[@dingokidneys]

I recently used Rescuezilla to move a Windows install from a nasty slow 1TB HDD to a 128GB partition on a 240GB SSD. It took a bit of wrangling, preshrinking and moving the Windows partitions around on the source drive, then backing up to an external hard drive, installing the SSD and recovering the Windows install from the external HDD backup image. It was tedious and clumsy but it all worked out well. It was essentially a dry run for potentially moving my aged brother's Windows install to new hardware should that be necessary. As it turned out, I swapped him over to Linux Mint and he's happy as a pig in mud.

[@whiteviper5964]

Thank you Brian ♥

[@kw0064]

Used to use Norton Ghost from DOS many years back. Simple and fast. Now using Windows Image to backup but so far have not verified its effectiveness with real restore/migration.

[@SuperLittleTyke]

I assume that this procedure would work in exactly the same way if the target disk is a large capacity internal 3.5" SATA hard drive, e.g. WD, Barracuda, or similar?

[@dingokidneys]

It will work just the same, only slower.

[@SuperLittleTyke]

@@dingokidneys Great!

[@darrenraymond5334]

i have used this software works as it should nice one😁

[@Britec09]

Great 👍

[@AppleExpeditionProductions]

Thanks for this video I have been trying to clone my 1 TB SSD to another 1TB SSD for backup. I always get an error massage after several hours - a device that was specified does not exist. Both drives have no bad sectors. Should I migrate to a bigger SSD?

[@angelhernandez-zv3lf]

Awesome really helped me out

[@BillyNoMate]

having both drives plugged in while rebooting? wont that confuse it? in the XP days if you did that on 1st reboot, then you wont be able to separate those drive if you wanted your windows to work. I always unplug the old drive on 1st reboot, let the new drive familiarize its new body before plugging the old drive back in.

[@Tibasu]

Tried to buy a new SSD because my current one for my system is at 66% life, but the new one doesn't show up in the boot options after I used Hasleo Disk Clone to clone windows. The SSD is an option for priority override, but not listed in normal boot options

[@lackieffsonyoutube]

Are the games and everything you have on your previous hard drive cloned to the new one? Will everything in the new hard drive have the same files and games as the old one?

[@TonyBourke]

Yea,but the drive i cloned from is still showing as my drive that is running the windows OS. What have i done wrong?

[@blindmansentertainment7735]

Is it possible to have a separate drive just for video editing im wondering if this would reduce computer resources and keep a 2tb drive for the rest of the computer if so could or have you done a video thanks

[@mrandersen6872]

*fixed* I get a "windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause." error after doing this and changing my boot order to the new SSD. Edit: I fixed this by using "Boot to WinPE" instead of hot migration. All other steps same, then I just changed the boot order in the BIOS and it worked!

[@swmovan]

There used to be a formula, using cmd line, to copy one drive to another. I don't know why they put a stop to this. It was easy and you didn't need to install any software.

[@zrpe1060]

can I delete all the data from the previous drive and use it as storage?

[@brianharris1830]

Well done Thankyou

[@XDFcooler]

I don't need a third party software. All I needed was a backup image & recovery!

[@YourDailyThoughts143]

so I'm gonna save the disc genius software in the source drive, correct? and not to the target drive?

[@HumanDoing]

Please help! I've been stuck doing this for 2 days, watching every tutorial.. There is apparently bad sectors on my old ssd, windows can't detect and fix it so everytime I try to clone it stops and gives an error code. How do I clone ONLY THE OS (windows 10) without the rest of my data?? Which partitions do I clone?

[@syukranletal9413]

have a question, is the drive have to be bigger than the previous one or still possible as long as the drive enough space?

[@NowLedgeOutpost]

If I use external adapter for the cloning and put it inside my system and change the boot sequence, will it boot normally?

[@CMDR-V-UncleJ]

ya my OS drive 512G ssd is getting full picked up a WD black 2T mvne.. this is what i needed. I still have 2 Spinny dives that need updating soon Game/Editing WD blues. the New MB is a MSi b-550 A pro CPU AMD 5600x.... just upgraded from a amd fx 8320.. 10yrs old ish

[@richardoram-t2h]

Will it work for an old spinning hard drive to a kingston SSD ?

[@Dipto9]

in my opinion mini tool partition version 10 is the best and free to migrate windows to another ssd

[@Britec09]

many ways to do it

[@Ko-Deckard]

If you’re using a Samsung SSD whey not do the job with Samsung Magician?

[@bjazz68]

Thanks very much.

[@MarcusElliot]

Excellent Video 👍

[@Britec09]

Thank you very much!

[@ChamathGavinda-z4z]

Thankyou very much bro

[@fbifido2]

what if you have a 1TB HDD which is only using 30GB, and you want to OS-Migrate to a 256GB SSD?

[@bogdanbilcan8335]

First do a shrink of your C drive partition to a size smaller than the new SSD you want to migrate to, and then it should work.

[@Poludioskroz]

0:51 is it possible to clone os from older ssd(2.5inch) to secondary nvme m.2 without enclosure ,just via that cable...that way we could use win 8 and win 11 on one computer,laptop..?

[@normanwhite2227]

should work, one boot at the time on bios

[@SupaxzJP]

So 1tb to 1tb mine is not full yet but im changing to gen 4 to gen 5 ssd will it be a problem doing what was explained in this video?

[@Sterbenys]

I want to move my OS from my 1tb SSD to my new NVME m.2 2tb, but will it only move the OS? because I don't want it to move everything else that's in that SSD I just want the OS to the 2tb.

[@jonathanhantke6314]

Is DiskGenius better than Macrium Reflect Free?

[@User010o1o]

When I press OS migration it’s only giving me the option to select my local disk C (500gb) but I want to move it to my local disk D (1TB). Did I miss something or what

[@ahmad_x5658]

Can I safely format old c drive after process complete????

[@UCpn82OERMJxlYj6aHS-4klQ]

Great vid, Ccn you unlock bitlocker with this program.

[@beefsteak69]

if my target disk has old data on it even though i have separated it into 2 partitions. The first partition is for old data and the second partition is for Windows migration. Will my first partition also be lost?

[@bitsiv]

NEED HELP!! What if the application stop responding mid transfer. Can I just close the application and start again?

[@xblastx1956]

I stopped the process after about a minute because I didn't see target drive having the same files/sectors as the disk to be copied. Now I have an exclamation mark on my new drive and I keep getting errors and I can't proceed. I've tried to reformat the new drive and it keeps failing. Any help would be appreciated.

[@dingokidneys]

I've not been a daily Windows user for years now so be careful, but I'd guess that you need to delete the partitions on the new drive using Disk Management. This should get you back to a blank drive from where you can try again. If that doesn't work, you may need to create a new partition table (GPT for preference) after deleting stray partitions.

[@xblastx1956]

@@dingokidneys Under Disk Management and diskpart I reset the new SSD, but I need to learn the disk genius program better because that is where I keep running into problems. I really just didn't know enough to attempt this to begin with. Thanks for the help dingokidneys.

[@KnightmareUSA]

I've had issues with the Samsung nvme (loses boot) but not the WD nvme. if crystaldiskinfo shows any newish nvme with less than 100 in health then it might be on it's way out

[@Ghostly_scarf]

just a question does this work if you just want to transfer data from a hdd to ssd?

[@matt_918]

I don't know if you still need the answer to this question but yes. I just did it myself.

[@rickyfelan]

Hello hopefully you’ll respond to this, I’m doing your steps here and I am at the spot were you decided not to click the “when finished, change computer boot sequence” I want my pc to boot from this SSD that I am changing everything over too, so I should click that right? And then I should also click “automatically set to boot from migrated target system” right?? Just trying not to make a mistake. Please help

[@rickyfelan]

Also I’m assuming it’s okay to delete everything off the SSD that you copied everything from right?

[@NightNurse3711]

Can i then take the cloned drive and throw it in my new build pc as a boot drive?

[@breeziekwt5992]

currently doing this rn. how do I delete everything off of my hdd after cloning it to my ssd?

[@Hunnedollas]

When i hit “os migration” it doesnt show the target disk - just shows my hdd and not my ssd but in file explorer my ssd is showing up there no issues. Any tips?

[@jesyryan170]

What if my mains SSD is in my gen 4 slot and new ssd will be in the gen 3 slot. Do i clone with the nee ssd in the gen3 slot and after switch the slots? Or do i do this before.

[@TechT2]

Very nice software

[@zootaar9526]

How can i manualy change the booting drive afyer this process as the two drives are installed inside my pc

[@thewatcher5271]

Will It Work With XP On A Mechanical Drive To An SSD? Thank You. (Like #452)

[@Britec09]

DiskGenius supports Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista/XP

[@calebcooley1080]

It’s not letting me select my ssd drive I want to clone into as my target drive? Doesn’t even give me an option to use it as my target drive?

[@JeddyXonny]

Help, I pressed restart and now I can't boot in so i have to use my old ssd and the new is gone

[@williamscheb3010]

Why not use Macrium Reflect?

[@angrycodfan6759]

HELP !, I did all this but my c drive / disk1 is showing as the old 500gb ssd ,and my new cloned 1tb ssd is d drive / disk 0 ?

[@angrycodfan6759]

Problem solved :) I put the old ssd into the 2nd slot ...once I removed that ssd it booted from the new one thank RnJesus !