best free hard drive cloning software 2018

We then tested the service to see how the software could be used for cloning data from both a normal hardware as a well as an external hard drive. To test for the best disk cloning software we first set up an account with the relevant software platform, whether as a download or as an online service. How we tested the best disk cloning software Additionally, free or budget software options may have built-in limitations on how much data or how many files you can actually clone. For example, not all will clone multiple partitions at the same time. When deciding which disk cloning software to download and use, first try to determine how difficult the data might be to backup and recover. Which disk cloning software is best for you? Read our full AOMEI Backupper review (opens in new tab). To clone a disk including a Windows system, the disk style (GPT/MBR) of the source disk and the destination disk must be the same. However, do note that the free standard edition only supports a data disk clone. Instead, there's a paid-for version available for a single PC license. The whole process means that you end up with a full copy of your harddrive and won't need to reinstall Windows when copying your clone over to a new harddrive. Although the software is Freeware, there's no adware bundled with the software. There's also an intelligent cloning option, which only copies over used space on the harddrive. Sectors and partitions are copied over, along with key files such as boot.ini, NTLDR, BCD, winload.exe and MBR. A key feature of the software is the ability to clone a large disk to a smaller SSD drive.

AOMEI Backupper is a disk cloning utility that's free to download and use.

Best free hard drive cloning software 2018