Clone your hard drive with Macrium Reflect

 

Before you begin with Macrium Reflect, ensure the drive you're going to clone to is connected to your PC. It's also good practice to clean up any files on your system, especially if you're moving to a smaller drive — you can't have more data than the new drive can hold.

1. Launch Macrium Reflect from your Start menu, desktop or taskbar.

2. Click the disk you want to clone. In this case, I'm choosing my C: drive because it is the drive I'm swapping out. A blue rectangle will appear when the disk is selected.

   

3. Click Clone this disk…

4. Click Select a disk to clone to…

   

5. Click the destination disk to which you want to write a clone — this can be an external hard drive or an internal drive connected by an enclosure. Remember, this process will erase any data stored on the destination drive.

6. Click and drag the partitions from the disk you want to clone. Ensure they are in the same order on the external destination drive as they are on the original drive.

   

   You may now need to change partition sizes so that they fit a smaller or larger hard drive. In my case, I'm cloning to a drive the same size as the old one, so I don't need to change anything. If you're moving to a smaller or larger drive, follow these instructions to resize partitions before proceeding with steps seven to ten.

7. Click Next when all partitions have been dragged over to the destination drive.

8. Click Next to see a summary of what you're about to clone. This is a good time to ensure the drive letters are all correct.

   

9. Click Finish.

10. Click OK.

    

Cloning to a smaller or a larger hard drive

Dealing with partitions when moving to a hard drive of a different size requires a couple of extra steps. If you're moving to a smaller hard drive, you want to ensure your data fits. The first thing you want to do is clean up your original drive so that it has less data than the new drive can hold. If you're moving to a larger hard drive, you want to expand the primary partition so that it takes up the entirety of the new disk.

Here are the changes you need to make in Macrium Reflect when dealing with hard drives of different size. Insert the following steps in between step 6 and step 7 in the preceding instructions.

1. Click the C: partition.

2. Click Cloned Partition Properties.

   

3. Type a new number that isn't smaller than the amount of data you currently have on the partition. Change this value so that the partition grows or shrinks depending on whether you're moving to a smaller or larger drive.

4. Click OK.

   

You can now continue with steps seven to ten in the preceding section.

 

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