Cloning Win11 on SSD to harddrive

Hi:

I am a newbie to cloning and want to clone everything (Win11 + all applications) on a SSD to a harddrive (basically should the SSD drive fail, I want to be able to just remove the SSD and use the harddrive as the boot dirve instead . Will this be a problem , or it has to be SSD to SSD ? The SSD is 1T , plan to clone it to a 2T harddrive , is this OK?
Is this a sector-to-sector cloning ?
Which cloning software is recommended for newbie (Aomei or Macrium Reflect or something else) ? I need something simple and free for home use (for just one machine).
What harddrive (internal) brand , Seagate , Western Digital or some others? I looked around and saw the name Toshiba popping up, they are making harddrives now ? Any good, reliable? Their prices seem to be lower than others like Seagate for the same capacity.
As for external harddirve (for data backup) , which brand is good?

If you want to buy a 2tb mechanical HD it is better to look for a CMR disk , the SMR disks are not great.

want to clone everything (Win11 + all applications) on a SSD to a harddrive (basically should the SSD drive fail, I want to be able to just remove the SSD and use the harddrive as the boot dirve instead

Click to expand...

The simplest way is to use os migration on the free version of diskgenius.


In the screenshots below a 525gb SSD is migrated to a 1tb HD

Click OS Migration





Select the target disk




This shows what it will look like - you can resize partition if you want.

the Source disk is shown at top, the Target disk is at the bottom




Click Start and then Click Hot Migration

( it will make a vss snapshot in a few seconds which is what it copies to the target disk - that is how it is done from within a running os )



Depending how much used space is on your SSD and the write speed of your target HD, it will take several minutes .

There are many programs you can use to clone a disk. AOMEI Backupper, EaseUS TODO or Partition Manager, Macrium, Acronis, MiniTool Partition Wizard, they all work. However, Windows 11 is designed to run on SSD's and I personally, wouldn't try it on an HDD.

Dch48 said:

There are many programs you can use to clone a disk. AOMEI Backupper, EaseUS TODO or Partition Manager, Macrium, Acronis, MiniTool Partition Wizard, they all work. However, Windows 11 is designed to run on SSD's and I personally, wouldn't try it on an HDD.

Click to expand...

There is nothing wrong with HHD's Windows 11 is designed to run both hhd/ssd just hhds are slower. The hard drive is going to be a temporary solution as a just in case anyways and not be ran unless needed.

I realise that running Windows 11 will be slower on HDD but the "life span" of SSD makes me nervous. I recently migrated from Vista , the hard drive on which it is installed is still working fine after all these years , I doubt very much SSD will last that long; also SSD is still quite expensive for the same capacity.

SevenEleven said:

I realise that running Windows 11 will be slower on HDD but the "life span" of SSD makes me nervous. I recently migrated from Vista , the hard drive on which it is installed is still working fine after all these years , I doubt very much SSD will last that long; also SSD is still quite expensive for the same capacity.

Click to expand...

The lifespan stuff about SSD's is way overblown. The average SSD will last longer than any of us will. My oldest one has 2% wear after 6 years.

Necrosaro said:

There is nothing wrong with HHD's Windows 11 is designed to run both hhd/ssd just hhds are slower. The hard drive is going to be a temporary solution as a just in case anyways and not be ran unless needed.

Click to expand...

Oh, it will work but there is an upcoming feature in Windows 11 called direct access and it is strictly aimed at SSD performance.