Usually when you want to clone system drives, you must reboot your system via ISO/CD and then do the cloning while your system is halted, but today we’re show you a little software which can get the job done while the system is running – Hot Clone.
I’m not talking about backup of system drive to an image and then restoring the image to disk. No. Just clone system disk while using the computer.
There are many partitions software around which supports system drive cloning, but most of the time you have to reboot your system and the cloning process takes place between the booting process starts again.
If you’re IT admin and looking to clone a system drive (typically C:/ drive) without rebooting, you might be interested by this tool called WinToHDD. It is a small software utility which is free for home users, but paid for professional or enterprise utilization. Note that the software also works for Server Operating systems. The free version only works on Windows Home OS.
WinToHDD does this while-you-work and it is so simple to use, that everyone, even non-IT person can use it easily. Hasleo has also another tool called Disk Clone which is slightly more advanced and is focusing on partition and disk cloning, including sector-by-sector cloning, MBR-to-GPT conversion and Windows migration.
Note that there are many other tools, more advanced, which allows “hot-cloning” system drives and partitions. I can mention AOMEI Backuppper, Macrium Reflect or MiniTool Partition Wizard. All those tools can do the job.
Why would you want to do a Hot-Clone of your Windows system?
This is typically when you upgrading your C:/ drive. Usually, when you want to put larger or faster SSD and replace the aging old drive, you must plan ahead as there is usually a downtime. If not, your coworker cannot use his/her PC during the copy process which can sometimes be lengthy.
That’s why it Is interesting to know, that there are tools like the one we are talking about today – WinToHDD. It does the job, clones the layout and resizes the partitions automatically, to match the destination drive.
Then when the process is finished, you will have to halt the system and physically install the new drive, but it takes significantly less time than waiting for a copy of full system drive.
There might be several reasons why you want to have a tool supporting hot-clone.
For example, you have:
- Running apps – Your system is running this super important application that cannot be taken down during office hours.
- Someone is working on the PC – You want to upgrade the system drive to larger one, but don’t want to do that outside office hours.
You can quickly connect an external USB drive, install and launch the application (installation takes 1 min only), and launch the System Clone wizard to start the clone operation.
Both cases allow you to clone the system OS drive to another drive (which can also be connected via USB btw) and WinToUSB will automatically resize the partition to fit the newer/larger disk without creating unallocated space.
Hot-Clonning System drive – The steps:
Connect the destination drive to the PC and quickly format it so it can be detected by the Windows OS and WinToDDD.
Launch the System Clone Wizard (we’ll talk about the other functions later).
Select the OS you want to clone – in our case, we simply select our Windows OS from the drop-down list. See below…
Next screen asked me to select partition scheme. This might confuse some people, but the GPT for UEFI is preselected. We stick to this.
Note: Unless you’re cloning older systems, this is the option to keep (pre-selected).
The destination disk – the next screen you will see something like this. The destination disk needs to be selected. This is the newer disk with typically larger capacity or faster specs. That’s why you need to move your system to, right?
Click next and leave the software to handle the clone. During this time, your coworker or you can work and use the system. No need to reboot. For larger drives the operation might takes few hours depending on the speed of the old drive (it can still be an HDD remember!).
Finish – this screen below should show the message that the system clone completed successfully.
And now we can have a look at the destination drive and see that we have the familiar folder structure with Program Files and Windows directories. We’re done.
You need to stop the system and decommission the old disk and put in the new disk.
As I said, typically, older HDDs are slow so to copy data out of those disks can take time. If you don’t want to waste your time, WinToHDD can do the job and hot-clone your system.
What else WinToHDD can do?
As you might notices, so far, we have talked only about one function of the software. There are three more.
Reinstall Windows – allows you to reinstall Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista & Windows Server 2008 or later directly from an ISO, WIM, ESD, SWM, VHD or VHDX file without using a CD/DVD or USB drive. With this feature, even if you don’t know anything about computers or partitions, you can easily reinstall Windows with just a few clicks. Also, it can help you bypass Windows 11 system requirements such as TPM 2.0 requirement, RAM requirement, internet connection requirement, etc.
Install Windows – You can plugin another, secondary disk, and install Windows to this drive. With this feature, you can easily install Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista & Windows Server 2008 or later onto disks other than the one where your Microsoft Windows operating system is installed.
Create Multi-Install USB – This feature allows you to create Windows installation USB with multiple choices at boot. It’s kind of a Multi-Windows Installation USB that you can create. If you’re working for an organization that has several OS W10/W11/2019/2022/2025 Server, you might want to create such an USB stick. (Note: there are other tools around which do exactly that).
Check out WinToHDD here.
Final Words
WinToHDD and Hasleo Disk Clone are both developed by Hasleo Software, but they serve slightly different purposes:
WinToHDD – Primarily designed for Windows installation and system migration. It allows users to reinstall Windows, clone the system disk, and create multi-installation USB drives.
Hasleo Disk Clone – Focused on disk and partition cloning, including sector-by-sector cloning, MBR-to-GPT conversion, and Windows migration.
While both tools offer system disk cloning, Hasleo Disk Clone provides more advanced disk management features, whereas WinToHDD is primary destined for Windows installation and migration
The hot-clone system function described in the article stands out as typically other software tools, with few exceptions, needs a reboot where the cloning process continues. Here we have a tool that can do the cloning operation while you using the system. There are some limitations obviously, such as, if you work on some local files which are changed/updated during your working session, most likely you’ll have to update those files manually after the clone is finished.
This tool is typically suited for IT technicians which has to deal with physical computers or physical servers, even if, for server systems the cloning might need few more reboots as you’d have to create a RAID volume with your new disks before starting the cloning process.
Overall, even with such a small and easy-to-use software, individuals or enterprises will definitely find value which can save them a lot of time when upgrading their systems with new hardware.
