What's the best way to clone a drive for Windows 2024… any tips?

Tech Support Forum
1

I’ve got an old computer for some elderly people, and I’m planning to give them a new one. I’ve got a new, faster SSD for them, and I need to know how to clone the drive from the old one to the new SSD.

What I was thinking was setting up a live environment on a USB stick, plugging both drives into the same computer, and then cloning the drives from the USB.

Is this even possible, and if so, which software should I use?

2

Cloning Windows is generally not a good idea. If you want to keep the data, it’s better to back it up and do a clean install of Windows.

Here are guides for installing Windows 10 and 11:

Windows 10: https://rtech.support/docs/installations/install-10.html

Windows 11: https://rtech.support/docs/installations/install-11.html

3

@VANESSA
The problem is that the elderly person doesn’t remember their email password, and they don’t know how to reset it. They really need a new computer.

4

Tom said:
@VANESSA
The problem is that the elderly person doesn’t remember their email password, and they don’t know how to reset it. They really need a new computer.

Is the password saved in the browser? If it is, you can export all the saved passwords from there.

5

@VANESSA
I’ll check that next time I’m there! Didn’t think of it. I’m worried it’s just on the mail client, but if it’s saved in the browser, I’ll export it. Thanks a lot!

6

There are many cloning tools that can do this. I personally like Clonezilla.

7

AstroCipher3 said:
There are many cloning tools that can do this. I personally like Clonezilla.

I looked at Clonezilla, but I’m not sure I understand how it works. Does my live environment drive need to be big enough to hold the image, or can I just connect both drives to a computer that also has the live environment on it?

8

@Tom
Clonezilla can clone directly from drive to drive, no image is needed. Your boot media only needs to be big enough for Clonezilla itself.

9

Some live environment on a USB

You can use something like Hiren’s BootCD PE, which is exactly what you’re looking for. It boots into a live Windows environment and comes with a bunch of tools (you can see all of them on their download page).
The current version is based on Windows 11, but if you need one based on Windows 10, you can find v102 in their archive.