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As you probably know, the hard drive in your computer is used to store things such as your operating system (Windows) as well as your programs (apps) and personal files such as documents, pictures, music etc. And as you also probably know, your hard drive can fail and can also fill up when you try to install too many programs or store too many files.
Fortunately, there is a way to make an exact copy of everything on your hard drive on another drive, so you do not need to manually reinstall Windows, your programs and copy all your files over. This process is referred to as cloning a drive and can come in handy if you want to upgrade to a larger or faster drive or replace a failing drive before it is too late. In this article, we will be showing you how to clone your Windows drive using Clonezilla, which is a free tool you can use to make a copy of one drive to another. You can also use Clonezilla to clone your Linux hard drive if you are using that instead of Windows.
The first step in the process is to download the Clonezilla software from their website. They have a zip file version and an ISO. Most people use the ISO file and burn it to a CD or make a bootable flash drive using a tool such as Rufus. You may also want to run your file backup before starting this process just to be safe.
For our example, we will be cloning an 80 GB drive to a new 100 GB drive. As you can see in the image below, the 80 GB drive contains Windows and the extra partitions such as the EFI System Partition and Recovery Partition. For the destination drive, you do not need to have it formatted or assign a drive letter to it.
To begin, you will need to boot your computer to the Clonezilla CD or flash drive which may involve changing the boot order in your BIOS\UEFI so it reads the Clonezilla media first and not your Windows drive.
One the first screen, you can press enter to load Clonezilla live.
Next, you will need to choose your language and press enter.
You should be fine keeping the default keyboard layout.
Now you will want to choose the option to start Clonezilla which should be selected by default.
For the next step, you should choose the option for device to device.
For most people, beginner mode should be fine unless you are an advanced user and want to change some of the settings for the cloning process.
On the next screen, make sure disk to local disk is selected and press enter.
The next step is very important since you will need to choose the source disk which is the disk that Windows is installed on.
If you only have one extra hard drive, then Clonezilla should select it automatically for the destination drive. If not, be sure to select the right disk for the clone since all the data will be wiped from the destination drive.
If you think that you may have errors on your disk that you want to be checked and repaired, you can choose the second or third option, otherwise just press enter to choose the first option to skip disk checking.
If you are cloning your drive to a larger hard drive and want to have the extra space allocated to your Windows drive, you should choose the second option that says create partition table proportionally.
Next, you will need to tell Clonezilla what to do when the disk cloning process is complete. You can have it enter the command line, reboot the computer or shutdown the computer. Or you can choose the first option which is to do nothing and let you decide at the end.
Once the process starts, you will need to type in Y to continue and then you will need to type Y again at the next prompt.
Once the cloning process has started, you can expect it to take several minutes and the time it takes will vary depending on the size of your drive and how much data is on it.
Once the process is complete, you can press enter to continue.
Now you will be prompted to take some type of power action such as shutdown or reboot.
You can then remove your original drive if that is your intention and then boot to the cloned drive. You may need to change the boot order or do some cable swapping to make sure it’s the first boot device.
As you can see in the image below, our 100 GB drive is now the Windows drive and it has used the extra space for Windows as well.
As you can see, it is not too difficult to clone your Windows drive using Clonezilla.
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