How to Copy Contents of One Hard Drive to Another

Complete copies of hard drives can be done with a cloning program.

There can be several reasons for needing to copy data from one hard drive to another; for instance, if you are migrating data to a new computer or hard drive or if you just want to make sure you have a working backup. The simplest method is to just drag and drop the contents from one hard drive to the other. But this method will not work well for copying complicated things like operating systems. To do that, you need to use a hard-drive cloning program. The cloning program will copy your old hard, in its entirety, to your new hard drive.

Things You'll Need

• Both hard drives connected to your computer
• Hard drive cloning program

Instructions

Direct Copy

1. Connect both drives to your computer. This can be done by installing them both inside the tower or by connecting them via USB external enclosures.

2. Open your operating system's file explorer utility. Select the hard rive you wish to copy. Highlight all of the contents of the hard drive.

3. Drag and drop the highlighted files to your backup hard drive. Allow the files to copy over to the new drive. Depending on the amount of data you are copying, the process could take a couple of hours.

Clone the Hard Drive

1. Download and install one of the many programs that will allow you to clone a hard drive. Cloning a drive makes an exact copy of the drive on your new drive. It's the only way to accurately back up operating systems, as none of the data is rearranged at all during the cloning process.

2. Connect both drives to your computer, either by installing them or connecting them via USB external enclosures.

3. Open your cloning program. Select the "Clone Disk" function. Choose the drive you wish to clone and the destination drive for the data and start the program. Do not do anything else on your computer while the drive is being cloned, as it will change the data on the drive and disrupt the process. Cloning a drive can take a few hours. Once it is done, you will have an identical copy of the old drive on your new drive.

Tips & Warnings

• Back up your data regularly in case one of your drives crashes.

• Dragging and dropping does rearrange the data as it's copied on the new drive. This can make your operating system unusable on the new drive. Make sure to use a cloning program if copying an operating system.

References

• Dux Computer Digest: How to Copy the Contents of One Hard Disk Drive to Another

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish