How to Clone a UEFI Disk to an SSD Without Issues (Full Guide)

This article mainly introduces a simple yet effective way to clone UEFI hard drive to SSD in Windows 10, 8.1, 8, or 7. This method applies to all professional or regular Windows users. By following this guide, you can clone UEFI hard drive to SSD without issue in Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7.

UEFI Boot versus BIOS Boot

UEFI stands for “Unified Extensible Firmware Interface,” and it uses a hard drive initialized with the GPT partition style. BIOS stands for “Basic Input/Output System,” and it uses a hard drive initialized with the MBR partition style.

UEFI allows the use of disks larger than 2 TB. It has a faster boot process and more security features. The boot process goes like this:

BIOS restrictions limit users to disks larger than 2 TB. Also, the BIOS must run in 16-bit processor mode, with only 1 MB of space to execute. The boot process goes something like this:

You may also want to know: UEFI vs. BIOS: What Are the Differences and Which Is Better?

Why Clone UEFI Disk?

Here are the main reasons why people opt to clone a UEFI disk:

• Upgrade it to a larger hard drive
• The UEFI boot drive is not functioning properly
• The UEFI boot disk has failed
• Clone a UEFI disk to an SSD to optimize Windows/PC performance

If you are one of those who want to clone UEFI disk to SSD without hassle and error, then what you need is a simple yet professional disk cloning software.

UEFI Disk Cloning Software for Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7

How to clone UEFI hard drive easily? Here we recommend you use the UEFI disk cloning software - AOMEI Backupper Standard for help. It's fully compatible with Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, and 11. It supports disk cloning, partition cloning, sector-by-sector cloning, etc., on GPT disks, MBR disks, as well as WinPE bootable disks. You can use it to repair bad sectors on a hard drive or clone a hard drive with bad sectors.

Disk cloning software boasts the following impressive features:

How to Step by Step Clone UEFI Disk to SSD in Windows 11/10/8/7

To ensure that you can clone your Windows UEFI boot disk to SSD without any boot issues, you can convert SSD to GPT in advance. Then, follow the below steps to clone UEFI disk to SSD.

Step 1: In Disk Mode, select the HDD you want to clone.

Step 2: Select the SSD as the target disk.

Step 3: Edit the disk layout, and click “Continue” to proceed.

Since the target is an SSD, check the box for “Select this option if the destination is an SSD.”

A warning will appear, telling you that the data on the SSD will be erased. If you don't have anything important on the target drive, click “OK” to proceed.

Step 4: Wait for the process to complete.

Please activate the Disk Copy tool in advance with an activation code. You can click the button below to obtain an official activation code immediately and upgrade it to the professional version.

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Bonus Tip: How to Make a Bootable Clone of an UEFI Disk on an SSD

One more thing you need to do after cloning your UEFI boot disk to an SSD is to enable UEFI boot on the new disk:

Insert the new SSD with the UEFI boot disk contents into your laptop. Restart your PC. You should now be able to run the Windows system on the new SSD from UEFI mode.

If you have trouble switching between UEFI and BIOS boot modes, consult Microsoft's guide on Booting to UEFI mode or legacy BIOS mode.

Conclusions

That's all there is to cloning an UEFI disk with Disk Copy. As you can see, it's quite simple to copy an UEFI boot disk to another disk when you use the right disk cloning software. Disk Copy can also clone one partition to another, clone a disk with bad sectors, and more. You can download this tool anytime to resolve HDD/SSD issues.

FAQs on Cloning UEFI Disk to SSD with UTF-8 Encoding

If you have any problems, you can find more help in the Frequently Asked Questions below.

1. Can GPT disks be cloned?

You can use a disk cloning tool to clone a GPT disk. Note: If there is no system on the source disk (i.e., the GPT disk), you can successfully clone the data on the GPT disk. If the source disk has a system, the target disk must also be a GPT disk for successful startup. If the target disk is an MBR disk, it may fail to boot after cloning a GPT disk.

How to boot from a cloned SSD?

Step 1: After the cloning is done, restart your computer. While it's booting up, press and hold the "F2" key (it could be "DEL" or another key depending on your model) to enter the BIOS/UEFI environment.

Step 2. In the BIOS, change the boot order to set the cloned SSD as the boot drive.

(If you can't boot from the clone, this guide offers some troubleshooting tips to help.)

Step 3: Press the “Enter” key. Your computer should now boot successfully from the SSD.

3. Can I clone MBR to GPT?

Yes, you can use disk cloning tools to clone an MBR data disk to a GPT disk, and the cloned disk will be in the GPT format. Since it's a data disk, there's no need to consider booting issues. If you want to clone an MBR system disk to a GPT disk, please follow these steps.

Step 1. Firstly, convert the GPT disk to an MBR disk with a disk partition manager.

Clone an MBR disk with the Disk Mode feature.

Step 3: Use the Partition Master tool again to convert the MBR disk to a GPT disk.

To ensure the system boots properly, confirm that your operating system is 64-bit GPT boot, your BIOS supports EFI boot mode, and change the boot mode in the BIOS after conversion.