Nowadays, cloning a hard drive with the best free disk cloning software is the fastest and easiest way to boost an old computer. And you don’t need to wasting time re-installing Windows and programs from scratch. The greatest advantage is the cloning process will keep all your data on this disk intact, so you can restore these files effortlessly. Hard Disk Tools; There is a lot of hard drive cloning software available in the market. One can search Google using “free hard drive cloning software download” and find this cloning software.One can have a look at hard disk cloning software below.

• Clone Apple Hard Drive
• Freeware Hard Drive Cloning Software
• Hard Drive Cloning Software Mac Free Downloads

Cloning a hard drive is easier than you might expect. Follow to see how to easily clone a hard drive and transfer everything to a new hard drive or SSD with ease.

Case: Can I Clone My Hard Drive Including Operating System?

'Does cloning a hard drive copy the OS? My computer hard disk is nearly full and one of my friends told me that I can upgrade the old disk to a new drive by using reliable hard disk cloning software.

I plan to buy a new hard drive so as to clone the old disk to the new drive. But can I clone my hard drive including the operating system?'

According to most normal Windows and Mac users, they don't know that they can upgrade their computer hard drive when it grows old or out of disk space to a bigger one. Some of you may have heard of this but don't know how to execute the disk cloning operation on your own without losing data and OS, right?

In the following, we'll show you the whole process of how to clone a hard drive to a new or a bigger hard drive/SSD with step by step guide. Check out and learn how to upgrade your computer disk on Windows and Mac with ease now.

Overview of Cloning a Hard Drive

In this part, you will learn:

• 1. What does cloning a hard drive mean?
• 2. When do you need to clone a hard drive?

Cloning a hard drive is a process that allows you to copy all the content on a disk, including original data, operating system, and all boot files that the OS needs to boot up and run, to another equal-sized or bigger hard drive or SSD. Unlike backing up files, cloning a drive is to create an exact copy of your entire disk with the OS included.

When Do You Need to Clone a Hard Drive

So when do you consider to or when should you clone a hard drive to a new one? You may need to clone hard drive in many situations as listed below:

• The old disk is out of space - Upgrade hard drive to larger hard disk
• The computer is getting old and slow - Upgrade hard drive to a newer disk
• To transfer the whole contents of your hard drive
• Can't migrate OS by copying and pasting Windows files to a new hard drive
• To protect data from virus or malware infection - Create a full backup of disk data

So how to clone or upgrade hard drive safely and successfully? Follow the introductions as shown below, you'll get reliable disk clone software and a complete guide to clone one hard drive to another disk on your own.

Preparations for Cloning Hard Drive

Before you start cloning hard disk, here are some preparation jobs that need to be done in advance:

#1. Make Hard Drive Ready

• Get a second drive with sufficient capacity. To get a smooth disk cloning process, the second drive needs to be equal to or even share a bigger capacity than your current hard drive.
• Connect the new drive to PC. If your computer has only one disk slot, connect it correctly to your PC via a SATA-to-USB connection cable. If your computer has a second slot, install the new drive to your PC.
• Initialize the new hdd/ssd. If you need to clone and upgrade the hard drive in Windows PC, initialize the new drive in Disk Management.

#2. Download Reliable Hard Drive Cloning Software

As the tools for disk cloning on Windows and Mac computers are different, you should also download and install the right disk cloning software based on your operating system.

- Best Windows Disk Cloning software, free download

As Windows doesn't have a built-in disk cloning tool, downloading a third-party disk clone software is necessary. Here, EaseUS Windows backup software with a powerful disk clone feature is recommended.

It supports to clone and copy your entire hard drive to another disk in two levels: file-by-file copy & sector-by-sector copy.

- Best Mac Disk Copy Software Recommend

Unlike Windows, macOS contains a built-in tool - Disk Utility that works to 'clone' mac disk to a new hard drive for free. Besides, you can also try the Mac version of EaseUS backup software - EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac with its clone feature to help you upgrade a Mac disk with ease.

Clone Apple Hard Drive

How to Clone a Hard Drive on Windows

Applies to: Clone hard drive to HDD/SSD in Windows 10/8/7/XP, and even Windows Server machines.

So how to clone your current computer hard drive to another disk using EaseUS Todo backup? It offers safe hard drive disk copy/clone solution to transfer your data on the old disk to a new one.

With it, you can back up the system such as clone system disk Windows 10 or image hard drive in case of computer crash or system failure. The whole process goes through two phrases:

Phrase 1 - Clone a Hard Drive

Video Tutorial: How to Clone and Upgrade Hard Drive on Windows 10/8/7

Detailed Steps to Clone a Hard Drive

If you prefer a step-by-step guide, refer to the steps below and learn how to clone hard drive with this hard drive clone software:

Step 1. Connect the new HDD to your computer. If the new hard drive is not an empty one, please make sure you have moved all data to a safe place because all data will be wiped while cloning.

Step 2. Run EaseUS Todo Backup and select Clone at the left tool panel

Step 3. Choose the source disk and target disk.

Step 4. Click Proceed to start cloning all data, including os, applications and files to the new hard drive.

Phrase 2- Make Cloned Hard Drive Bootable

When you finish the disk cloning process, remember to install your new hard drive to your computer. Then set computer to boot up from the new disk.

Here are the steps to make your cloned HDD/SSD bootable:

Step 1. Restart PC and press F2/F12/Del to enter BIOS.

Step 2. Go to the Boot menu, set the new disk as the first boot drive at the Boot Priority section.

Step 3. Save all the changes and restart PC.

Your computer will automatically boot up from the newly cloned disk.

How to Clone a Hard Drive on Mac

Applies to: Clone and upgrade Mac hard drive without bootable issue.

As we recommended above, you have two options to clone a Mac hard drive: 1. Using macOS Builit-in Tool - Disk Utility; 2. Turn to Mac Disk Cloning Software - EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac help.

Let's see how to clone your Mac hard drive to another hard drive or SSD now.

#1. Clean Mac Disk Before Cloning

To avoid cloning unnecessary gigabytes of junk files, duplicate data, broken items, useless programs to the new Mac drive, it's necessary that you clean the Mac disk in advance.

You can either manually delete files and uninstall useless applications on your Mac or turn to reliable Mac cleaning tools for help. You may refer to How to clean up Mac hard drive for a detailed guide.

#2. Clone and Upgrade Mac Hard Drive to SSD/HDD

Using Mac Disk Utility to Clone a Hard Drive:

Step 1. Connect your new hard drive or SSD to your computer as an external disk.

Step 2. Go to Applications > Utilities > Select 'Disk Utilities'.

Step 3. Click 'View' on Disk Utility and select 'Show All Devices' from the menu bar.

Step 4. On the left pane, select your target drive (the HDD displaying as 'external' currently) and click 'Restore'.

Note that Disk Utility refers to cloning as a 'restoring' action over a hard drive, which is actually the same thing.

Step 5. Click 'Restore' to confirm the cloning operation.

Step 6. Wait for the cloning process to complete and click 'Done' to finish the operation.

Using EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac to Clone Mac Hard Drive

Step 1. Connect the new hard drives to Mac and launch EaseUS Mac cloning software.

Step 2. In the From drop-down list, select the source disk you want to clone.

Step 3. In the To drop-down list, select the other hard drive as the destination disk.

Step 4. Set up the disk cloning properties. Here, you are allowed to exclude files or folders if necessary.

Step 5. Finally, click the Start button to execute the cloning operation.

Wait for the cloning process to finish.

#3. Make Cloned Hard Drive Boot on Mac

When you finish cloning the Mac hard drive, you are now at the last step which is to set Mac to boot from the new hard drive.

Step 1. Move the old hard drive out of your Mac computer.

Step 2. Put the newly cloned hard drive or SSD to your Mac and install it correctly.

Step 3. Reboot Mac by holding the Option key, go to System Preference.

Step 4. In the Startup Disk section, set the new disk as the boot volume.

After this, you can restart Mac and the computer will successfully boot up from the new disk by then.

To Sum Up

This page explained what is a disk cloning process and tells when you should consider cloning a hard drive. Besides, we also offered a comprehensive solution to help you successfully clone a hard drive in Windows and Mac with reliable disk cloning hard drives.

In order to guarantee a smooth disk cloning and upgrading process, it's also important for you to make the new hard drive or SSD ready in advance. Also, a reliable disk cloning tool like EaseUS Todo Backup also plays a vital role.

If you still have some questions on this issue, check answers in the FAQs section as listed below.

FAQs About Cloning Hard Drive

1. How Long Does It Take to Clone a Hard Drive

The time of cloning a hard drive highly depends on the used space of your original disk. Let's take a 500GB hard drive as an example.

Normally, it would take one and half an hour to complete with a steady cloning speed at 100Mb/s. And if the speed is 50Mb/s. it would take about 3-4 hours.

If you turn to EaseUS Todo Backup for the disk cloning and upgrading operation, it would complete the operation within 1 hour.

2. Any Risks While Cloning a Hard Drive

Usually, cloning a hard drive doesn't contain many risks. It's highly secure and safe for both data and OS on your computer hard drive.

The only risk that you should be aware of is to let the cloning process complete. In a word, don't disturb the cloning once you start it.

Also, you should guarantee stable power supply to your computer and the hard drive.

3. How to Deal with the Old Disk after Cloning a Hard Drive

If you don't know how to deal with your old hard drive after replacing it with the new disk, here are some tips that you can follow:

1. Clean and wipe the hard drive, sell it.
2. Delete all partitions and repartition the hard drive as a secondary data drive.

We all understand the necessity of data backups, and an excellent hard drive cloning software for Mac can easily copy all the data from your hard drive, in case the data gets corrupted accidentally. Although Apple also offers its in-built mechanism, Time Machine, to make copies of your system in an external drive, the free best cloning software for Mac helps you to safely settle your data in another location without the need of an external drive.

Although, one can back up their data through cloud services like Right Backup now and then, a Mac hard drive clone software gives you additional features like disk partition, the security of data location and ease of restoring the data the way you like.

Also Read :How To Fix It: External Hard Drive Not Showing Up On Mac

We all believe that Mac is a robust machine; however, every device tends to slow down, due to wear and tear over time. Hence, it is advisable to keep the backup of your data with any of the Mac hard drive cloning apps so that you can transfer it from one system to another whenever required. So, here are some of the most reliable hard drive cloning software for Mac free explained below.

How To Select Cloning Software For Mac?

You can look for the attributes mentioned below to find if the software you have come across is worth testing.

• Advanced features like extraction of data when needed, getting volume video files, etc.
• Easy to use and understand for a beginner who is new to technology and in a hurry to get the data copied.
• It must be compatible with all the latest versions of macOS like Catalina.
• The software must not be tagged with viruses, malware or adware that hampers the overall security of the system.

Keeping these factors in mind, we have collated some software that helps in hard drive cloning of Mac.

5 Best Hard Drive Cloning Software for mac

1. EaseUS Todo Backup

Whether one wants to look for hard drive cloning on Mac for commercial or non-commercial purposes, EaseUS never fails to amuse Mac or Windows users. It is compatible with macOS 10.15 Catalina and secures your data from getting lost when you set it up in an automated stealth mode for backup. Cloning your disk volume allows you to boot the disk any moment and migrate to a new device.

Pros:

• Paid versions support advanced features like email backup, offsite copy, etc.

Cons:

• There are issues with file sync and mirroring.

Download: EaseUS Todo Backup

2. Carbon Copy Cloner

Carbon Copy Cloner is pretty much standing alone for hard drive cloning of Mac. It is because of the legacy, ease of use and many pointers & hints to guide you through the process of cloning. You can easily arrange your tasks in the tool ranging from Bootable backup, RAID backup, scheduled backup, etc. Whenever you are facing difficulties in running the system, ask for the tips or solutions. Moreover, you can even control your preferences via the Preferences tab with Carbon Copy Cloner.

Cons:

• It does not integrate with cloud backup systems.

Download:Carbon Copy Cloner

3. Clonezilla

Clonezilla can be called the best free cloning software for Mac that helps in system deployment, metal backup and recovery. File systems supported include ext, FAT, HFS+, VMFS3 and more, LVM, etc. The good thing about Clonezilla is AES-256 encryption to secure the data and its storage.

Pros:

• BitTorrent is supported in the Clonezilla lite server.

Cons:

• Differential or incremental backup is not supported.

Download:Clonezilla

4. SuperDuper

The reason why SuperDuper is called the best Mac hard drive clone software is its simple user interface and ease of use even for a beginner. Once you explore inside, you will find the disk management flow and variety of scripts built inside the tool which can be later used to back up the data. Not just this, advanced features allow the user to control which files need to be copied or ignored from one drive to another. And yes, if anything goes wrong, then you can always roll back the system to avoid unexpected errors. Quite apt and worthy of trying the software for hard drive cloning of Mac.

Download:SuperDuper

5. ChronoSync

As ChronoSync saves your chosen cloned data on the cloud, it naturally makes space in the system side by side. In the beginning, you need to create a synchronizer task where the selection of source and destination drive is being made. Along with this, you can make rules and preferences as per your requirements. This will help you to create a backup. You may find that completion of tasks may take a little longer, but impressive results would want you to download this fantastic cloning software for Mac.

Pros:

• Setup assistant is available for management of tasks.

Download:ChronoSync

Pro Tip

Where Hard drive cloning software maintains the health of the system at one end, one shall also keep the system optimized to save from accidents that could cause loss of data instantly. So how could one keep their system optimized in a better way? Using CleanMyMac X!

Freeware Hard Drive Cloning Software

CleanMyMac X is a powerful tool to leave Mac clutter free and frees up space for saving files in the future. It handles the responsibility of protecting your system by uninstalling the unwanted apps, cleaning the browser history & cookies, and removing the heavy CPU consumers side by side.

FAQs: Best Mac Hard Drive Clone Software

1. What is the best cloning software for Mac?

EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac and Carbon Copy Cloner are the hard drive cloning software for Mac for their efficiency and accuracy of results.

2. What is the best free software to clone a hard drive?

Clonezilla is one of the best free and open-source software to clone a hard drive. However, other software like EaseUS and Carbon Copy Cloner offers a free trial and money-back guarantee for user’s satisfaction.

Conclusion

All the cloning software for Mac that are being discussed above are exceptionally amazing. When you talk about SuperDuper, it is very straightforward in cloning your hard drive whereas when it comes to EaseUS Todo, it comes with lots of other features which is why the world trusts it. We also recommend EaseUS Todo, but you must also look for Stellar Drive Clone and Chronosync for their features.

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Hard Drive Cloning Software Mac Free Downloads

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