![]() The cloning of conventional hard disks and SATA based SSD drives to the newer style NVMe based drives is in many cases a relatively straightforward process, however, there are still some potential issues which could arise during such a process. Whilst I certainly hope Macrium eventually do decide to reverse this decision and make a free to use edition of Reflect available again ( it really was an excellent disk cloning tool), anyone seeking the Reflect disk cloning capabilities will, unfortunately, have to purchase the premium edition of the software as of right now ( this is currently Macrium Reflect Home version 8 which is priced from $49.99 per year or from a one-off $79.99 for a perpetual licence). Unfortunately, as of early 2023, the decision has been made to discontinue making Macrium Reflect Free available for download and instead only the premium edition of the software (currently this is Macrium Reflect Home 8) is being offered by the developers. As a result of this, you might be wondering why this software is no longer featured on the below list of free to use disk cloning software titles. This process, albeit involving slightly more work, would have the same net result as simply cloning the existing disk on to the new disk drive directly.įor many years a free to use edition of Macrium Reflect has been made available and this was widely recognised as one of the best free disk cloning tools available. NB – Personally speaking, I think the confusion between disk cloning and disk imaging often comes from the fact that, whilst disk cloning could be used as a form of backup (albeit an inefficient one), disk imaging could equally be used to create a clone between two hard drives (albeit making the process slightly longer than it otherwise needs to be and slower than it would have been using software which supports direct drive-to-drive cloning).įor example, if I had created an image-based backup of my entire hard drive using disk imaging capable backup software and then swapped out my existing hard disk for a new one, I could then recover the entire (old) disk onto the new disk using the disk image backup I made earlier on ( assuming I had some bootable recovery media to boot the system into beforehand and perform the recovery from within). Simply put, in cases where a PC might be made up of more than one hard drive or partition, the backup software will be able to automatically create multiple images of all connected hard disks and partitions which are in-use as a part of the system within the same backup set (i.e., capturing the entire system in a single backup set regardless of how many disks or partitions are in use). Sometimes you might see backup software titles advertising the fact that they can make full system image backups amongst various other backup related features. NB – for a more detailed guide on migrating existing PC systems to new or otherwise dissimilar hardware, please be sure to check out my guide to The Best Backup Software for Restoring to Dissimilar Hardware right here on. ![]() Once the cloning operation is complete, Windows will then (by itself) attempt to choose suitable device drivers for the new hardware (even if they are just generic drivers temporarily) until the correct drivers can be downloaded and installed for the new system. If you are using Microsoft Windows then this will often mean simply uninstalling any device drivers (using the built-in Windows Device Manager tool or a third-party alternative) and then performing the disk cloning operation straight afterwards. Whilst not as straightforward a process as allowing for specialist software to help manage any driver issues by itself, one potential workaround to migrating to a new system with dissimilar hardware is to uninstall any drivers prior to the disk cloning operation taking place to ensure maximum compatibility on the new system straight after any migration work is complete. NB – If this issue relating to dissimilar hardware sounds like it might be relevant to your own disk cloning or PC migration issues, then please note I have marked-out any software titles supporting cloning to such dissimilar hardware in the full list of free disk cloning titles further down on this page.
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