After confirming these changes, connect your external hard disk, then power on the device. Check to make sure the drive is detected. If this is the case for you, then system imaging is of no use instead, you should consider cloning, detailed further in this article.Īfter creating your backup, shut down the computer, install your hard disk or SSD drive, start the computer then load your BIOS or UEFI firmware. For instance, if you go from a 500 GB hard disk to a 256 GB SSD when you attempt to restore the system image created from the 500 GB disk, you will receive an error indicating the disk is too small. There is one major problem with System Image in Windows 10 and earlier versions of Windows it doesn’t support restoring partition layouts smaller in size than the drive it’s replacing.

An external hard disk with lots of storage is cheap and a recommended buy, whether you plan to perform an activity such as this or keep your system backed up regularly.

To back up your installation, you will need a USB external hard disk to store the image. We already covered the steps on how to create the system image. Windows 10 includes a built-in option called System Image, which lets you create a complete replica of your installation along with partitions. Migrate your Windows 10 Installation to a New Hard Disk or SSD In this article, we look at using the built-in System Image and Easeus Todo Backup to clone your drive to a larger or faster hard drive. There is an alternative in system imaging and cloning. Yeah, not me! That’s why today, I’m going to review an alternative process using the built-in System Image and Easeus Todo Backup to restore your installation to a larger or smaller disk. After all, who wants to rebuild the OS, figure out how to re-activate it, track down and reinstall all the apps, and oh yeah, move all your personal files over.

However, the issue with upgrading is dealing with the migration of your existing OS and data to the new drive.

Clone a mac drive on windows