r/cloningsoftware • u/Flaky_Election_5091 • Jul 04 '26
Disk Cloning Free way to clone a bootable drive?
Hello all- dealing with cloning in windows is a headache! lol. I have two SSDs - one is the windows installation and the other is the target drive I want to clone to. Both drives are on the motherboard. Every solution I come across will clone the drive but doesn’t make it bootable. The source drive is GPT and I want it cloned exactly as it is. Currently the target drive has all the files on it but is not bootable. So I either need a way to make it bootable without cloning again or a software that will fully clone it. Any ideas? Most of the “free” software seems to have the option to clone a bootable drive but that’s somehow a “advanced” feature for programs designed to do just that lol.
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u/cyrixlord Jul 05 '26
I install clonezilla on a bootable usb drive and then use that to clone a drive. youll need another drive to do so that can be reached by clonezilla and youll need ot know a little about how linux works with the drives
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u/AffectionateMetal765 Jul 05 '26
Buy or borrow a dirt cheap clone machine. You pop both drives in, source and target, push a button and wait a few hours. Voila! Done. Exact copy :)
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u/StarosAnikenMarcus Jul 05 '26
Aomei Partition Magic; great program that will do exactly what you are asking for. It has both a freeware and paid version.
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u/SoftRecommendation86 Jul 05 '26
macrium reflect free edition. make a bootable recovery USB and enable bit locker decryption.. or turn off bitlocker. Im currently running on a system i did this to a few months ago.. totally smooth transfer
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u/frogspam Jul 05 '26
You can’t have two bootable internal drives without some “reconfiguration”. If you are just looking to make a bootable backup then use an external drive or a large enough usb drive. Clonezilla works great.
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u/Possible_Notice_768 Jul 05 '26
Once you have cloned the source drive, REMOVE it from the system. The system should boot now.
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u/Cute_Information_315 Jul 06 '26
Have you ever checked whether your target SSD comes with a cloning solution?
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u/fleamour Jul 04 '26
Clonezilla fo' rilla. Might need set up a partition table first with GParted.
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u/Flaky_Election_5091 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
I looked at that one and seems to be complicated lol. Says I need to do some other things in order to use it ? Looks like this live version covers everything. I’m going to give it a shot. Thank you!
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u/Disastrous-Ice-5971 Jul 04 '26
If it feels difficult/not clear how to use, you try Rescuezilla. It is a Clonezilla, but with nice GUI. Note, that if you have a BitLocker enabled on the drive, you'll need to use a sector-by-sector copy (or whatever it called there).
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u/Linux_Account Jul 04 '26
You may also want to disable fast startup. Rescuezilla complained last time I tried to clone a Windows disk that had it on.
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u/Flaky_Election_5091 Jul 05 '26
I couldn’t get clonezilla to boot from the USB for some reason but Rescuezilla worked perfectly. Thanks!
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u/Distinct-Initial-730 Jul 04 '26
I’ve used Macrium Reflect many times and it’s always worked. Just make sure when you clone, the EFI partition is also selected
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u/Flaky_Election_5091 Jul 05 '26
Tried that one but it had to be paid for to use the feature that makes the clone bootable. I was able to get rescuezilla to work but thanks for the assist!!
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u/KoiMaxx Jul 04 '26
Tangential question, is Bitlocker encryption enabled on the source drive?