Question: my current hard drive is so tiny that all partitions are nearly running out of space. Therefore, I bought a 1TB WD disk and plan to replace the old small one with it. But the problem is how to transfer all installed programs to new disk. Who can recommend me an easy and safe way to clone Windows 7 hard drive to a larger drive? I don’t want to reinstall anything.
Answer: Using free drive clone software must be your best choice, which directly copies the entire disk, including all partitions, data information, file system, cluster size, and so on. Compared with one-by-one file transferring, disk copy saves lots of time and helps avoid unnecessary troubles. If users do not know which drive clone freeware to download, try using MiniTool Drive Copy. It can help clone any type of hard drive to a larger one without bringing any damage to original data. Detailed operations will be shown in the following content.
How to Clone Windows 7 Hard Drive to Larger Drive with MiniTool Drive Copy
When this free drive clone software has been installed, please run it to get the starting interface below:
Here, 2 functional modules are listed, namely “Disk to Disk” and “Partition to Partition”. Please choose the former to clone the entire disk.
Then, select the system disk and click “Next>”. After that, select the drive that will save the copy of the source disk and click “Next>”.
Next, choose one of copying methods from three and click “Next>” to get a note shown below:
This note is useful for users who want to boot computer from the new large disk, and they need to set the new disk as the default boot disk in BIOS. Then, click “Finish” to get the following interface:
Here, as long as users click “Yes”, MiniTool Drive Copy will clone Windows 7 hard drive to the larger drive automatically. Note: if Windows 7 is being used, the free drive clone software will ask users to reboot computer, and it will perform operations in boot mode. This is for data security.
Do you want to replace the old or small hard disk with a new or capacious one? Take the recommended method.