Disc image software can make your life easy when switching your Hard disk to SSD. Disk imaging or Disc cloning software is copying the entire hard disks sector by sector, saving as an image file (ISO image) and make copies out of this image. This disc cloning software is using an enterprise level to clone hundreds of PCs with the same OS and prebuild applications.
These disc image tools are helpful even for personal use, especially, when you want to replace your laptop or desktop hard drive. Take this scenario, where your old hard disc has hundreds of software and applications that you purchased in past years, and you already lost the software keys to re-install. You can take and keep a disc image of this hard disc and clone this image to a new hard drive or SSD without knowing the serial key of that software.
Another possible use of this hard drive imaging software is to take a backup copy of the system. Even for a new or an old PC, after you install all the required applications and software, you can make a disc image of that hard drive and keep on an external drive. In future, you can use this disc image to retrieve your software in case you lost hard drive or card your hard disk.
Here are some of the best disc image software for Windows that can perform hard drive cloning of your Windows disk.
Macrium Reflect
Currently, Macrium Reflect known as the most polished free disk image software in the market. With a narrow and straight interface, the user can easily learn all about it with less effort. This cloning software allows you to image the entire system or a particular file as well as folder. During the image creation, you can set the compression level to make the process complete efficiently.
Macrium Reflect comes with a feature through which select to close down the system after the imaging/cloning is done. The Rapid Delta clone feature accelerates the processes to save the time and resources during imaging or cloning.
Windows OSÂ Support: Windows 10, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Home Server 2003/2008/2011, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2011, Windows Server 2012, Windows Small Business Server 2003, Windows Small Business Server 2008, Windows Small Business Server 2011
Supported Functions: Migrate OS to SSD/HDD | Hard Disk Cloning |Â Partition Support | Reorder & Resize Partitions | Supports SSD | Support CD, DVD or Blu-Ray |Â Differential Images | Website Link
Paragon Hard Disk Manager 15 Professional
For people Paragon Hard Disk Manager 15 Professional is an all-rounder for file imaging, data backing, and recovery. The great customizable settings of this disc cloning software make it easy to copy the existing hard drive onto another drive. This disc imaging software is one of the best addressing application your current imaging needs well.
Paragon drive image software has the capability of solving your issues for years to come to use it for the time. This HDD cloning tool bundles powerful features to manage data on big hard disk and sophisticated OS. One can take advantage of this tool to migrate the operating system to SSD and onto a dissimilar hardware effortlessly.
Partition Support: Create, format, delete, undelete, hide or unhide partition; set partition active/inactive; set, change or remove drive letter; change hard disk partition label (Volume Label); check file system integrity
Windows Versions Support: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Home
Supported Functions: Migrate OS to SSD/HDD | Hard Disk Cloning |Â Partition Support | Supports SSD | Support Virtual Machines | Virtualization |Â Website Link
Acronis Disk Director
If you are a beginner, then Acronis Cloning Software is the perfect option for your disk cloning software. The interface of the software is quite easy to use and comes with simple icons. The features present in this computer imaging software are powerful allowing the users to customize the cloning process, as they want it. There is no reliance on the internet by the tool to work efficiently.
This windows imaging software supports versioning, giving people the easy roll back option through several updates. The person can get back to their favorite version with the option and the data is protected through family data protection.
Windows Versions Support: Windows 7 SP1 (all editions), Windows 8 (all editions), Windows 8.1 (all editions), Windows Home Server 2011, and Windows 10 (including Anniversary Update)
Supported Functions: Hard Disk Cloning | Copy | Partition | Data Backup | Supports the latest SSD hardware | Backup Mobile and Mac to Cloud |Â Website Link
EaseUS Partition Master
EaseUS Partition Master is considered as one of the powerful and simple to use disk cloning tools of all time. With this cloning software, one can clone entire hard disk to another drive without doing any sort of reinstallation on Windows. The tool inherits the support of hard disk having a storage capacity of 2 GB to 4 TB.
This hard drive imaging software can easily resize the partition and merge it all on the same disk smoothly. Even there is a partition-hiding feature that makes the partition hidden in Windows. The partition is kept under the wraps with other connected drives. Rebuild the entire MBR of any drive on your system.
Partition Support: Resize, move, merge and split partitions without data loss to make better use of hard drive capacity.
Windows Versions Support: Supports Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10
Supported Functions: Migrate OS to SSD/HDD | Hard Disk Cloning |Â Partition Support | Recover Partition | Supports SSD |Â Website Link
Symantec Ghost Solution Suite
Enterprise users are taking advantage of this Ghost Solution Suite to build thousands of desktop and laptop system from a basic disc image. Symantec Ghost Solution Suite is an excellent accelerated disk imaging software for desktops, laptops, and servers. Ghost allows the user to clone their entire data present on the hard drive to another. The cloning process is done without restarting or slowing the system down.
Coming with intelligent drive-to-device mapping, the tool clones each file to the drive quickly. The hard disk cloning software accelerates and simplifies the imaging process when needed.
Windows Versions Support: It runs on every Windows OS that has a modern, dedicated server with a 1 GHz or faster processor with 1 GB or more of RAM.
Supported Functions: Hard Disk Cloning | Supports SSD | Quick Imaging |Â Website Link
Clonezilla
Whether it is a single machine or 40 machines, this free cloning software, Clonezilla can do system imaging efficiently and quickly. This disk imaging software makes the process easy as well as flexible in many ways. Through the help of the tool, a technician can at the same time do cloning of a single machine as well as of forty systems.
Backed by an open source community, the tool is there to assist, in case of any trouble. The cloning speed of Clonezilla is fast, running at a rate of 8GB/min to the users. The image created by the tool could be encrypted if the user wants it to be.
Windows Versions Support: Windows 7 SP1 (all editions), Windows 8 (all editions), Windows 8.1 (all editions), Windows Home Server 2011, and Windows 10 (including Anniversary Update)
Supported Functions: Hard Disk Cloning | Supports SSDÂ | Open Source |Â Website Link
MiniTool Partition Wizard
MiniTool Partition Wizard is a highly competent hard disk cloning software available for Windows. The interface of the tool focuses on its approach and making it easy to use for users. It supports all the latest partition technologies to give the users the best during the cloning process.
The disk cloning software also allows you to convert the disk partition table without any data loss. Also, shrink and extend the partitions made quickly with MiniTool Partition Wizard. Align your partitions easily with the tool to optimize the performance of the drive.
Windows Version Support: Windows XP, 2000 Professional, Vista SP2, Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8 and Windows 10(all editions, 32 bit, and 64 bit)
Supported Functions: Migrate OS to SSD | Hard Disk Cloning | Supports SSDÂ | Copy Disk Partition | Convert File System |Â Website Link
It is a good thing to create an image of your hard disk. With the image, you can use the image to get back the necessary data when you need it the most. These disc images software is best in their work and protects your data by making a copy of it. The tools can simplify your work and speed up the process in no time.
This is the first time that I hear of these programs. Thank you for the information! Might come in handy.
Backups are indeed handy. It saves one or many a lot of headaches should anything go wrong. Comparatively speaking, external drives (for general data or backup) are a lot cheaper than they use to be. Better to be safe than sorry…
I have used Acronis True Image for years with good success. I have always cloned to the same size or a larger disk. I have a family computer that has a 1TB HDD but not much of it is taken up. Wondering if I can clone from the 1TB HDD drive to a 500 MB SSD. Have read that this might present a problem with some cloning programs. Any thoughts? Thanks!
You have to have the same size drive or larger in order to make a proper image / Clone. The software generally copies verbatim and therefore looks at the free space as well. That way you have an exact duplicate of your original without (hopefully) any hiccups. I know this because I have tried myself in the past when I was a newbie to all of this stuff. Hope this helps. Best of Luck!
Acronis 2018 is buggy as s****. Crashes my system and fails to restore images, 99% of the time. Some “meta data” crap error that I as a user should not be dealing with. 2017 was rock solid but their stupid licensing limitations meant I had to buy 2018 even though I owned a perpetual license key for 2017 (would not recognize it), and they would not sell me a new 2017 serial number. After many years, I’m now done with Acronis. Sorry you guys got so bloated and buggy and forced users to “upgrade” to 2018 when they needed to new licenses.
You don’t have to have the same size or larger hard drive to use Acronis. I just cloned a larger drive to a smaller and have done it many times in the past. Jeff is wrong.
You don’t need a bigger disk if your format is NTFS on Win8 and lower. With anything else, such as Win10 and Linux, there is no way to clone to a smaller disk.
jeff P, I’m sorry you don’t know the difference between drive cloning and a forensic image backup. Perhaps Google can set you straight so you won’t keep spreading misinformation.