The Easiest Way to Clone Windows Server 2012 to New Hard Drive

The need to clone Windows Server 2012 to new hard drive

“I have a computer with Windows Server 2012 installed on it. Now I’m planning to replace the old hard drive with a new one which offers higher capacity. But I don’t want to reinstall the system. Is there any good way to accomplish it or any good software recommended?”

As data is increasing day by day, your hard drive storage space is becoming less and less, and your computer will become slower and slower. To improve performance, upgrading to a new HDD or SSD is a good choice. We all know that reinstalling the OS and applications again is time-consuming, so the above user wants to know a good way to make it.

Fortunately, there is a quick and easy method -- System Clone. System clone means to make a same copy of the original OS (operating system) and transfer it to another storage device so that you don’t have to reinstall it. AOMEI Backupper Server is the way to go.

Best software to clone Windows Server 2012 to new hard drive

AOMEI Backupper Server, especially designed for Windows Server systems, is not only a data protection and disaster recovery tool, but also a disk/partition cloning software. It’s handy to operate for everyone even not a computer expert. All Windows OS Platforms are supported.

You can easily clone Windows Server 2012 to new hard drive with the System Clone or Disk Clone feature. The System Clone will only clone the system drive while the Disk Clone will clone the entire drive, including system and data. Next, we will show you how to perform Windows Server 2012 system clone with AOMEI Backupper Server.

How to clone Windows Server 2012 to new hard drive

First, connect another disk to your computer. Make sure it’s available to be detected. Then, download AOMEI Backupper Server, install and launch it.

Step 1. Select “System Clone” under the “Clone” tab.

Step 2. System drive and all boot related drives are selected by default. Decide a partition as destination. Note that you’d better choose the first partition or available area on the target disk. Otherwise, the system could not boot.

Step 3. Confirm the operation and click “Start Clone”. Wait for a while until the progress reaches to 100%. In order to make system bootable from the new hard drive, please shut down your computer after system cloning is completed. Then disconnect the source disk and connect the destination disk.

Notes:

1. If you clone from smaller disk to larger disk, you can edit partitions on the destination disk, by clicking “Edit Partitions” to make it.

2. If you choose “Sector by sector clone”, then it will clone each space of the selected partitions, whether it is used or not. Not supported in larger disk to smaller disk cloning.
3. If you are cloning disk to an SSD, ticking “SSD Alignment” will accelerate its reading and writing speed.

Conclusion

As you can see, AOMEI Backupper Server can help you clone Windows Server 2012 to new hard drive without effort. You can choose to only clone the system or the entire hard drive. And it’s also possible to clone a single partition.

Besides cloning, AOMEI Backuper Server is also an excellent backup and restore tool. Offers all kinds of backup options like system/disk/partition/file backup, full/incremental/differential backup, and lets you create multiple backup schedules as per your need. 

PS: It also has the free edition AOMEI Backpper Standard for Windows PC users to protect their data safe.