This Article Teaches You How To Simulate A Hard Drive Without Losing Data And Transferring Its Contents To Another Drive Without Modification.

Transfer Windows, (B) Based on an article by Pocket-Lint, perhaps, consider upgrading to SSD faster hard drive and transmission are disabled; But even the thought of installing Windows on a new drive and restarting it scares you.

This process can be even more tedious if you set up system tools, software, and system shortcuts the way you like; Because restoring all the previous settings is not easy.

A new version of Windows can offer great speed, But installing it may take a long time to restore the previous data and settings.

No need to worry; Because there is a solution to this problem that can help to have a system with new Windows and previous settings.

One method that can help you with this is called cloning or cloning. With the right software, you can clone your entire current hard drive to another drive.

This method is very effective when you want to upgrade your system by replacing an old hard drive with an ultra-fast NVME drive. You do not need to worry about the complexity of the implementation process at all; Because it is very simple to do.

Buy and install a new drive

First, to start this tutorial, we assume you have a hard drive and you use it. This may be the only driver on your gaming device or business, so you plan to replace it with a newer, faster model. Maybe you just want to move your data to a larger drive for more space.

If you have Windows installed on your hard drive, you can add another drive and use this process to clone the old hard drive to the new model. After doing this, you can format your old drive and use it for other tasks, such as saving images, movies, games, and whatever you like.

The first step is to buy a new drive. There are some great examples on the market that you can choose and buy the best one based on your budget. You do not need an NVMe SSD to do this process, and this is just a reasonable upgrade.

Once you get the new drive, put it on a special slot in the system and get ready for the next step.

Download Macrium Reflect software

There is much software to simulate the system drive, from which you can choose the best option. Some of these software’s are free, But you have to pay for the rest.

We recommend Macrium Reflect for this process; Because it is easy to use and you can even do it with the free version. This software also has paid options that by activating them, you can easily back up your device regularly, if necessary.

The next step is to download Macrium Reflect and install it on Windows. Once the installation is complete, run the software and make sure you are in the Backup tab. Then you need to find the drive on which Windows is installed and which you want to emulate.

You should see a small button under the name of the Windows drive with the words “Clone this drive” written on it. Click on it and follow the on-screen instructions.

 

When done, you will see an option to select the drive you want to clone; Select it and start the simulation process.

In this process, all your data is simulated on the new drive.

The interesting thing about this method is that all software, settings, and other things are copied. In addition, permissions for various software are transferred to the new drive; As a result, you no longer have to worry about restoring various permissions on your system. Everything should work smoothly as long as you use the new drive on the same computer and do not make any other significant hardware changes to your system.

After completing the simulation steps, you have two versions of Windows on two different drives. To ensure that your device will boot from the proper drive in the future, you will need to make final BIOS fixes; So restart your computer and click the Delete button on the keyboard several times before a full load of Windows to open the BIOS screen.

Change boot options in the BIOS

After entering the BIOS screen, you will see the options under the settings section that allow you to change the boot order of the drives. It basically tells your computer which drives you to want to use to load Windows, or at least which one to download from the beginning.

This section is usually under Advanced Options> Settings> Boot (advanced options> settings> boot). There you will probably see two options, one of which is Hard disk drive boot priority and the other is fixed boot order priority.

With two identical versions of Windows on different drives in the device, you will probably see that both drives are listed. All you have to do now is set the boot option (boot option # 1) on the new drive and make sure it is used as the first drive to boot the system. It is recommended that you remove another drive from the list and disable it.

After completing this step, click the Save Changes button and exit the BIOS. This will restart your computer and try to load Windows.

Congratulations. You now have a new drive that has the usual Windows settings installed and you can use it easily. You can format the previous drive and use it for other tasks such as saving the required files or deleting them completely from the system.

Important note

Remember that simulation does not save your drive from trouble. For example, if a virus enters your device and destroys it, you can just clone it to a new drive and infect it as well. Sometimes you can speed up your device by installing new Windows and deleting all the old files and other things that are left unwanted on your drive; You may be in a situation where your device needs to do so.

In general, the simulation method is very efficient and you can easily use it to prevent deleting files and even Windows. Do you know any other software to do this? Please share its name with us in the comments section.