How to Fix Cloning Hard Drive SSD Taking Forever (5 Ways)

Why Cloning Hard Drive SSD Taking Forever?

There are many reasons why cloning hard drive to SSD taking forever,  and this article summarizes the following common reasons for you.

• Data size is too large: While the cloning process should not take too long, it will make a copy of the entire drive. Therefore, the larger the size of the data, the longer it will take.
• The USB connection is slow to read and write: The USB cable is also one of the most important factors affecting the transfer speed. If the port is not healthy, the disk will be slow to read and write, which directly affects cloning performance.
• Bad sectors on the source disk: If there are bad sectors on your hard drive, the cloning process will also be affected. This will also cause the cloning process takes longer than usual or even fails to clone.
• Old computer configuration: An old computer configuration will slow down the operation and the cloning process will take longer to complete.
• Target disk has bad sectors or read/write issues: If the target disk is not new and has been in use for a certain amount of time, it may have read/write issues or bad sectors, which will slow down the cloning process.
• Tool problems: If the selected cloning tool is not good enough, it will also make the cloning process unsafe, ineffective, and very slow.

How to Fix Cloning Hard Drive SSD Taking Forever

After understanding the reasons, next, this article will introduce 5 ways to fix this problem in turn. You can choose the corresponding method according to the reason. If you are not sure of the exact cause, you can also just choose the easiest method. You can continue reading for more details.

Fix 1. Wait Patiently

If you are troubled with cloning HDD to SSD taking forever problem due to large data size, you need to be patient. People often ask how long does it take to clone a hard drive to SSD. It depends on the size of the data you need to transfer, the speed of the cloning software, the computer device, hard drive, etc. If your cloning speed is 100MB/s, it will take about 17 minutes to clone a 100GB hard drive. You can estimate your time and check the result after cloning.

Fix 2. Use SATA Connection

If the cloning hard drive to SSD taking forever problem is caused by a USB connection, you can choose to solve the problem with a USB to SATA adapter cable. A computer may have two types of hard drive connections. PATA (parallel ATA), also known as IDE, and SATA (serial ATA). Compared to PATA, SATA connections tend to be more stable and inside the cabinet, it prevents dust buildup or shock interference with the ports.

Fix 3. Check the CPU and Memory Usage

Sometimes, some programs can take up a lot of memory and make you encounter the problem of cloning hard drive taking forever. Before cloning your disk, make sure you have closed all your applications. Also, there may be some background processes that take up a lot of memory, and you can check your CPU or disk usage according to the following steps.

Step 1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Ese together to open Task Manager. 

Step 2. In the Processes tab, look at the Process to see what is causing your hard disk high CPU or Memory usage.           

If the CPU and Memory are very high and too slow, it is recommended to perform a disk clone with a highly configured computer.

Fix 4. Replace the Target Disk with a Healthy One

If you have problems with the target disk, such as bad sectors or read/write speed problems, then the most efficient way is to replace the old disk with a new one. And this is a very profitable investment, because a new disk can be used for many years. You can refer to the following steps.

Step 1. Buy a new hard drive or SSD.

Step 2. Connect it to your computer with SATA and make sure it can be recognized by the computer.

Step 3. Run a secure and reliable cloning software to clone your hard drive to the new and healthy target disk. 

Fix 5. Use the Free Disk Cloning Software (Easiest)               

If the cloning hard drive to SSD taking forever problem is caused by a tool problem, then you can choose a free and safe disk cloning software like AOMEI Backupper Standard to help you. It provides Disk Clone, System Clone and Partition Clone functions to meet your different needs. And it also has the advantages below to solve the cloning hard drive to SSD taking forever problem due to different reasons.

Secure boot: After cloning, you can successfully boot your computer from the cloned disk.

Intelligent clone: By default, it will only clone the used sectors so that you can clone larger drive to a smaller one easily if you need. Even if your source disk has bad sectors, it can clone hard drive with bad sectors by skipping the bad sectors automatically.

Live clone: This software allows the cloning process works in the background, so you don’t need to close any of the process you are using.

Sector by sector clone: If your target disk is the same as or larger than the source disk, you can use this feature to clone all the sectors on the source disk, no matter they are used or not.

SSD alignment: If your target disk is an SSD, this feature can help you accelerate the reading and writing speed of the SSD.

Multiple OS: It supports multiple Windows operating systems, such as Windows 11, 10, 8.1, 8, 7, XP, Vista, etc.

Before you start the cloning process, you need to backup your important files on the target disk, because the target disk will be erased during the disk clone process. And first, you should download the free cloning hard drive to SSD software - AOMEI Backupper Standard.

If you are a Windows Server user, you can choose AOMEI Backupper Server. Then you can follow the graphic tutorial below to fix the cloning hard drive to SSD taking forever problem.

Step 1. Open the AOMEI Backupper Standard and click Clone > Disk Clone.

Note:✎...

The standard version only supports MBR to MBR (system disks) and data disk clone. If you want to clone GPT to GPT, or clone disks between GPT and MBR, you can upgrade to the professional version.

Step 2. Choose the hard drive as the source disk. Then, click Next.

Step 3. Choose the SSD as the destination disk. Then, click Next.

Step 4. Tick SSD Alignment to make the target SSD perform better. Confirm your operations and click Start Clone to clone hard drive to SSD.

Note:✎...

Edit Partitions: This feature can help you to change the partition size automatically or manually. And it’s available in the professional version or higher versions.  Upgrade now to the AOMEI Backupper Professional and you'll get 5% off for one computer.     

Summary

This article shows the possible causes of the cloning hard drive to SSD taking forever problem and 5 solutions to fix it. You can choose the corresponding solutions according to the different causes. You can also just choose the easiest solution - clone the disk with the free and reliable disk cloning software AOMEI Backupper Standard.

It will not only help you clone your hard disk to SSD easily, even if your source disk has bad sectors, it can also automatically skip the bad sectors for cloning. Whether you want to clone disks to large or small disks, it can meet your needs. And it can help the target SSD to speed up the read/write speed during the cloning process.

Besides, if you only want to clone the operating system or partition, you can choose its System Clone or Partition Clone functions. You can download this software to discover more useful features.