How to Clone a Laptop Hard Drive

A hard drive is the storage device of your computer. It holds all the data and files that are currently stored by the user and being used by the system itself. There are many commercial programs available to back up these files, in case the original data is deleted or corrupted without the user's intention. This can be caused by carelessness or even an attack by a malicious program. This article will guide you on how to back up, or clone, your laptop's hard drive to another storage system without the use of a third-party program.

Things You'll Need

• External hard drive (optional)

Instructions

1. Turn on your computer. Connect your external drive, if you are going to use one as the clone. Click "Start" on the bottom left of your screen. Click on the "Run" icon.

2. Type "cmd" in the prompt. Click "OK." This will open the MS-Dos prompt window, a simple black prompt with the text "C:>Documents and Settings\Your name>" with a blinking text input space.

3. Prepare the drive you are going to use (internal or external) to hold the original data by creating a folder named "Backup" on the drive. Do this by right-clicking in the drive window, hovering over the "Create new..." button on the menu that appears, and selecting "New Folder."

4. Return to the MS-Dos prompt and type the following command: "C:\> xcopy TD:\ CD:\backup\ /s /e"
   Where TD is the target drive you want to clone, and CD is the drive that will be the clone. For example you would type "C:\> xcopy c:\ d:\backup\ /s /e" if you would like to clone your C: drive into your D: drive.

5. Wait until the copying process is complete. When done, restart your computer, then navigate to the Backup folder you created in Step 3. Verify that the data was copied.

Tips & Warnings

• The copying process may take anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours, depending on the size of the data being transferred and the speed of your computer.

• Avoid downloading, moving, or deleting any files on either the target drive or cloned drive. Doing so may lead to corrupt or missing data.

Resources

• List of MS-Dos Commands