How to clone a hard drive in 3 easy steps

Clone a hard drive so it can boot on first install

I created this post only to complete one of my previous posts, Lenovo Z500 SSD upgrade, as I realized that maybe not everybody knows how to clone a hard drive.

I have made it as easy as possible, so that there will be no doubts.

Before cloning anything you need to make all your folders visible and unhide the protected operating system files. Without doing that the cloning software will copy everything that is visible and your clone will not be bootable. At least this is my opinion. I have done it before with other HDD’s and without this option active my clones were not bootable.

You do this in Organize – Folder and Search Option – View.

Once you did that you have to download a free software for cloning and backup. The one that I used is the Macrium Reflect. It’s free and I consider it very easy to use.

So after you downloaded the software here is how to clone a hard drive in 3 easy steps:

Step 1 – Open the Macrium Reflect

Step 2 – Select the drive that you want cloned and the drive that you want it cloned to.

Step 3 – Adjust the settings for the cloning process and then click Finish.

And that’s all folks, this is how you clone a hard drive. After the cloning process is finished all you have to do is click close and your drive is cloned. If the instructions for cloning with the Macrium Reflect are not as detailed as expected that’s only because the help section of the program (Help – How to – Backup – Clone a disk) is really explicit, so it would be redundant to repeat it here.