How to upgrade hard drive to a larger one with ease? This article will show you how to clone hard drive to a larger drive by using the professional partition manager – MiniTool Partition Wizard.

How to Upgrade to Larger Hard Drive without Data Loss?

As we all known, when a computer is used for a long time, a large number of data can be saved on the local disk, making it difficult for us to keep more files and the performance of computer will become less and less. In this case, you can choose to clean up disk space to allocate some free space or upgrade to larger hard drive.

Needless to say, the latter is a better choice. However, the progress of hard disk upgrading is difficult and much worse situation is to lead to data loss.

But don’t worry. In this post, we will show you how to upgrade your hard drive with an easy and safe way.

To replace a hard drive without reinstalling Windows 10, you can take advantage of a piece of professional partition manager. Thus, MiniTool ShadowMaker is strongly recommended.

MiniTool Partition Wizard is designed to optimize disk use. It comes with so many powerful features so that you can completely control your hard disk and partition, such as clone disk, extend partition, resize or move partition and so on.

Thus, in order to upgrade hard drive to a larger one, you can purchase MiniTool Partition Pro from the following button.

And in the following part, we will show you how to perform a hard disk upgrade without data loss.

Step-by-step Guide to Upgrade to Larger Hard Drive

Now, we will introduce the way of hard drive upgrade without data loss. Here we use the function of Copy Disk of MiniTool Partition Wizard for example. The operation methods are very easy even those inexperienced users can operate it well. And we also introduce the operation methods step by step.

Note: Migrate OS to SSD/HD will also accomplish this job. To get the details, read Migrate Windows 10 to SSD without Reinstalling OS.

Step 1: Preparing work

  1. Install MiniTool Partition Wizard on your computer.
  2. Launch it.
  3. Select the hard drive you want to upgrade and right-click it. And here, we choose the system disk.
  4. Choose Copy from the context menu to continue.

select the disk and choose copy

Step 2: Start to hard disk upgrade

  1. Choose a target disk and click Next to continue. Please backup all important data on the target disk in advance, because all data on the target disk will be deleted during the copy
  2. Choose a copy option and click Next.

choose a copy option and click Next to continue

Kind Remind:

  1. If you are an SSD or Advanced Format users, we recommend that the Align partitions to 1MB should be ticked, because it can improve the performance.
  2. Check Use GUID Partition Table for the target disk option will turn the target disk to GPT partition style. However, the free edition of MiniTool Partition Wizard won’t allow you to check this option. To clone MBR system disk to GPT disk, you need to purchase a license to continue.
  3. If you check Use GUID Partition Table for the target disk and the source disk is a system disk, please remember to change BIOS mode to UEFI for a successful

Step 3: Read note

If you want to boot computer from the target disk, you need to confirm the target disk as the default boot disk and click Finish.

click Finish button to continue

Step 4: Confirm the changes

  1. You can preview the changes and click Apply to execute the changes.
  2. Then you are required to restart your computer to complete hard drive upgrade process.

click Apply to confirm the changes

When all steps are completed, you have successfully cloned hard drive to a larger one without losing data.

I used MiniTool Partition Wizard and it quickly helped me upgrade to larger hard drive without data loss. What’s more, the cloned operating system is bootable. Amazing!Click to Tweet

Besides the MiniTool Partition Wizard, MiniTool also provides another program for you to upgrade to larger hard drive. It is MiniTool ShadowMaker that can also help you to replace a hard drive without reinstalling Windows 10.

MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Bottom Line

From the above information, we know that MiniTool Partition Wizard is very convenient to upgrade to larger hard drive and it is very easy to operate even to those inexperienced people. And the most appealing point is that this software can successfully upgrade hard drive without data loss. Thus you can download it for getting more extraordinary experience.

Now it’s your turn to have a try. If you have got a better trick, welcome to share it in the comment zone. For any questions related to MiniTool software, you can contact us via [email protected].

Clone Hard Drive to Larger Drive FAQ

Can I clone a drive to a larger drive?
There is no doubt that you can clone a drive to a larger drive. To clone a drive to a larger one, MiniTool provides two powerful programs which are MiniTool Partition Wizard and MiniTool ShadowMaker. They enable you to upgrade hard drive to a larger one without data loss.
Can you clone a larger hard drive to a smaller SSD?
You can clone a larger hard drive to a smaller SSD as long as the latter one is able to contain all files on the original hard drive. To clone hard drive, you can use MiniTool programs – MiniTool Partition Wizard and MiniTool ShadowMaker. 
Can I put a larger hard drive in my laptop?
You can replace your original hard drive with a larger one in laptop. Thus, you can clone the OS to the larger hard drive without data loss with the professional clone tools – MiniTool Partition Wizard and MiniTool ShadowMaker.
How do I upgrade my hard drive?

To upgrade hard drive, you can choose to clone the hard drive to a larger one since this way would not lead to data loss.

  1. Install MiniTool Partition Wizard and launch it.
  2. Then choose original hard drive as clone source and choose Copy from the context menu.
  3. Choose a target disk.
  4. Choose copy options and click Next.
  5. Read the note and click Finish.
  6. Click Apply to confirm the changes.
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About The Author

Tina

Position: Columnist

Tina is a technology enthusiast and joined MiniTool in 2018. As an editor of MiniTool, she is keeping on sharing computer tips and providing reliable solutions, especially specializing in Windows and files backup and restore. Besides, she is expanding her knowledge and skills in data recovery, disk space optimizations, etc. On her spare time, Tina likes to watch movies, go shopping or chat with friends and enjoy her life.