[Solved] Cloning Hard Drive/SSD Taking Forever
How Fix Cloning Hard drive/SSD Takes Forever (6 Solutions)
SSD or HDD cloning is taking forever, how to clone an HDD or SSD easily and quickly. Use Qiling Disk Copy, the best disk cloning software, to easily clone a hard drive and create a bootable Windows 10/8/7 clone.
PAGE CONTENT:
- Fix 1. Wait Patiently - If you have lots of data to clone on your hard drive or other devices, you need to wait patiently
- Fix 2. Use SATA Connection - If your cloning process is slow, SATA is an excellent choice to solve this problem
- Fix 3. Use Bootable Disk Copy - Download, install and run Qiling Disk Copy on a healthy Windows computer
- Fix 4. Check the CPU - Type task manager in the Windows search bar and select "Task Manager."
- Fix 5. Replace the Target Disk - Buy a new hard drive or SSD. Connect it to your PC with SATA
- Fix 6. Try Qiling Disk Copy - Qiling Disk Copy is the best disk clone software, which creates an identical copy of data
Problem - Cloning HDD/SSD Takes Forever
"My Windows 10 is slow to clone my HDD/SSD. It seems that it cloning process is taking forever. I want to clone a 256GB hard disk to my external hard drive. The copying speed starts fast, then drops down without any reason. I'm using Acronis True Image WD Edition. I started the cloning process yesterday 24 hours ago, and it's only 18%. Is this going too slow, and what should I do?"
Analysis - How Long Does It Take to Clone a Hard Drive
Establish how much data is on the hard drive to be cloned. This is the single most critical factor in estimating the time to clone a hard drive. It is also crucial to determine the method that will be used to clone the drive. So we must know that when reviewing drive transfer rates, keep in mind that the rates quoted are "burst" rates, and not sustained transfer rates.
A Seagate drive might claim that it can transfer data at 100MBps (megabytes per second), but it will not be able to move a gigabyte's worth of data at this speed in the real world. This reality holds for the newer high-speed SATA drives, which claim to be able to transfer 300MBps (Megabytes per second), but the actual transfer rates that should be used to calculate a cloning process should be lowered to roughly one half of that speed. So if your cloning speed is 100MB/s, it takes about 17 minutes to clone a 100GB hard drive. If your cloning process takes 87 minutes to clone 500GB data, it is the average speed.
6 Reasons - Why Does Cloning Process Take So Long
Why does the cloning process take forever? What are the main causes? After our analysis, we have listed the top 6 reasons below.
1. The size of the data is too large. It would take a long time to clone a large amount of data. That is to say, the larger the size of the data, the longer time it would take.
2. The USB connection is too slow to read and write. The USB cable can also affect the transfer speed.
3. The original disk is old and has bad sectors. If there are bad sectors on your hard drive, the cloning process would also be affected.
4. The computer configuration is too old. The old setup can slow down any operation.
5. The target disk has bad sectors or read-and-write problems.
6. Tool issues. The disk cloning tool is not good enough and makes the process slow like a snail.
6 Solutions - How to Fix the Cloning Hard Drive Very Slow Issue
As the reasons and causes mentioned above, we can fix the cloning hard drive very slow error accordingly. Here are the top 6 solutions to speed up HDD or SSD cloning process.
Solution 1. Wait Patiently
If you have lots of data to clone on your hard drive or other devices, you need to wait patiently. If your cloning speed is 100MB/s, it takes about 17 minutes to clone a 100GB hard drive. You can estimate your time and check the result after the cloning. If it takes 1 hour to clone only 100MB data, you should fix it by reading on.
It takes a long time to skip bad sectors. At this time, you can try Qiling Disk Copy.
Solution 2. Use SATA Connection
There are two types of hard drive connections that a computer could have: PATA (Parallel ATA), also known as IDE, and SATA (Serial ATA). If your cloning process is slow, SATA is an excellent choice to solve this problem. PATA is capable of data transfers speeds of 66/100/133 MBs/second, whereas SATA is capable of 150/300/600 MBs/second. The improved speed of SATA allows for programs to load faster, as well as pictures and larger documents.
Solution 3. Use Qiling Boot Disk to Clone
What if the process takes a whole day for cloning a 500GB hard drive? It is indeed too slow! If changing your USB 2.0 to 3.0 or SATA helps you solve the problem, you can let it be. If the cloning process is still running slow, use the super-fast disk cloning software - Qiling Disk Copy. It is an easy and secure disk copy/clone utility that can help you to transfer data and upgrade hard disk at a super-fast speed. Besides, the newest version has dramatically improved the speed of cloning, get it now!
How to Clone A Hard Drive
If you still get a bit rusty on the cloning details, you can watch the video to get hold of how to use Qiling Disk Copy.
Step 1. Download, install and run Qiling Disk Copy on a healthy Windows computer. And connect an external storage device like a USB flash drive or and external hard drive to the PC. Click "Create bootable media".
Step 2. Select USB and select your device, click "Proceed".
Wait for the process to complete and then you'll get a bootable disk.
Step 3. Connect the bootable disk USB and a new SSD/HDD to the computer on which you want to clone the disk and set the computer to boot from the bootable disk by changing the boot order in BIOS.
Step 4. On Qiling Disk Copy, click "Disk/Partition clone" to start cloning.
Step 5. Select the source disk that you want to copy or clone and click "Next".
Step 6. Select the destination disk where you want to clone/copy the old disk and click "Next" to continue.
Step 7. Check and edit the disk layout as Autofit the disk, Copy as the source or Edit disk layout. Autofit the disk is recommended.
- Sector by sector clone: Copy as the source option will copy/clone the same layout of partitions on your source disk to the destination disk.
- Edit disk layout allows you to resize or move partition layout on the destination disk manually.
- If your destination disk is an SSD drive, do remember to tick "Optimize for SSD" option if the target is SSD.
Click "Proceed" to start the disk cloning or disk copying process now.
A message now appears, warning you that data will be lost. Please confirm this message by clicking "OK".
Solution 4. Check the CPU and Memory Usage
To check your CPU or disk usage:
Step 1. Type task manager in the Windows search bar and select "Task Manager."
Step 2. In the Processes tab, look at the Process to see what is causing your hard disk high CPU.
If it is high and it is too slow, it is recommended to clone disk with Qiling Disk Copy boot disk or clone on a computer with a high configuration.
Solution 5. Replace the Target Disk with a Healthy One
Another way to fix the slow cloning issue is to replace the target disk with a good one. If there is something wrong with the target disk itself, then you have to buy a new drive or replace it with a good one.
Step 1. Buy a new hard drive or SSD.
Step 2. Connect it to your PC with SATA.
Step 3. Run Qiling Disk Copy to clone your drive to the new one.
Solution 6. Try Qiling Disk Copy
Useful tools can make you do more with less effort. Qiling Disk Copy is the best disk clone software, which creates an identical copy of data on one disk to another in Windows safely. It can do the following things:
- Clone HDD to SSD
- Clone an old disk to a new one
- Download it and clone HDD or SSD with fast speed.
Conclusion
The connection cable, disk situation, disk clone tool have an impact on your cloning speed. Select the right connection cable and disk cloning tool can help you yield twice the result with half the effort. Qiling Disk Copy is the one that can help you clone hard disk or SSD at a high speed.
People Also Ask These Questions
If you have other problems with HDD or SSD cloning, you can read on.
How long does it take to clone a 2tb hard drive?
The time varies from several minutes to hours. It depends on the six reasons mention above. But you can assume you are cloning a drive with a 2TB single file on it, and its a 7200 RPM Drive that can write at approx. 100Mbps, then it would take 4–5 Hrs approx.
How do I clone my SSD to a new SSD?
To clone SSD to SSD:
Step 1. Connect the new SSD to your computer and make sure it is detected.
Step 2. Download, install, and run Qiling Disk Copy on your PC.
Step 3. Select the destination disk where you want to clone/copy.
Step 4. Click OK to start the cloning process.
How do you clone OS from HDD to SSD?
You can utilize Qiling Backup to transfer OS from HDD to SSD without reinstalling Windows. Full guide: How to migrate OS to SSD.
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