Windows 10: Help understanding Windows 10 System Disk layout, for reliable cloning

Shortly after porting a few major apps and data groups to my Win-10 (pro, 64 bit) machine, I wanted to make sure I could clone my hard drive. I did so successfully with a very powerful tool I'll recommend everyone have, especially since you can do most operations with the free version. Its called "Minitool Partition Wizard", and don't let the name fool you... there's nothing "mini' about it.

Anyway, while in the process of cloning I was a bit confused at what I was seeing. My windows 10 system disk was 500gig, and starts with a sizable (about 1G) partition called "System Reserved", which has no associated drive letter or file system type. After that, the remainder of the disk is my C: drive, NTFS. My wife also has a windows 10 laptop with a similar layout, except that there is an additional backup partition.

Now I personally don't believe in backup partitions. I always backup to a separate drive. But in any case I used the "migrate OS wizard" in that MIniTool app to make my "clone". I was curious to see whether it would even bother with the the "System Reserved" partition. Well it did, and the new HD I copied to had a very similar layout, though the new drive was bigger (1T) and the copy seemed to proportionally increase the size of each partition in a sensible way. I tested the new drive by disabling the original HD in my BIOS to make sure it could boot from the new one, and that I had a fully operational system without the original drive.

Well all was well! So that's a sigh of relief! But still I would like to better understand the layout and requirements of this oddly formatted windows 10 system drive. Just what is the "System Reserved" partition anyway? And would there ever be a need to change anything in it? Would also be nice to know what info i need to understand, to figure out what kind of cloning software (besides my "MiniTool" ) can properly clone a windows system drive? What software should I avoid? And are there any special rules regarding adding other partitions that were never in question back in the windows 7 days?

A lot of questions I know. I would just like to understand more of the nuts and bolts involved with this new (or new to me) disk structure. Any tutorials or recommended articles or online docs appreciated! Thanks in advance!

:)

 

Do window 10 offer a clone image feature for backup system?

Hi, oemSoft

I am sorry to tell you that there is no built-in clone feature in Windows 10. If you just create a system image backup, you can follow the steps below to create a system image in Windows 10.

Step 1. Open Control Panel, go to System and Security > File History, then click System Image Backup at the lower-left corner. Or you can directly type backup and restore in the search box and select it from the search result list.

Step 2. Connect the USB drive to your computer and select it as the destination path, then click Next.

Step 3. Confirm your backup settings and click Start Backup.

However, if you want to clone your system directly, you can choose a third-party software like AOMEI Backupper. This is a professional clone software that allows you to

clone system to different places such as external hard drive, USB drive or Network, etc. without booting problems. With it, you also can clone the entire disk to HDD or SSD.

 

cloneing a drive in windows 10

Hi,I have this question last year,but my os is windows 8.there are my steps of

How to clone drive in winodws

,you can check.hope that helps

First,I download a free tool of MiniTool partition wizard and launch it.

Step 1. Connect SSD to Windows 8. Install and launch MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition, select the source hard drive and then choose “Copy”

Step 2. Select a disk to copy the source disk. Here you are expected to choose the SSD (we choose disk 3).

Note: All the data on SSD will be destroyed, so make sure you have done backup in advance. You are allowed to clone a hard drive to a smaller SSD, as long as it can hold all data in the source disk. You can also clone SSD to larger SSD by using MiniTool
Partition Wizard Free Edition.

Step 3. Review the changes you are going to make and also change the copy options if necessary.

Step 4. MiniTool Partition Wizard will tell you how to boot from the destination hard drive. So if you are cloning boot drive to SSD, you need to pay attention.

Step 5. When you are lead to the main interface again, you can preview the changes you are going to make from the middle pane. (Here disk 3 has the same disk layout with disk 1.) If you confirm these
changes, you should click “Apply” to make the changes effective. Hope that helps

 

Understanding disk partition window cloning Win 7: what does it revea?

Navy LCDR ,

When using EaseUS ToDo backup it asked, gave the option, of doing the cloning as MBR or GPT. With my limited understanding I felt GPT would provide a better condition for the SSD and would work and is compatible with the system.

Thanks very much

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Cereberus,

Ok thanks. The Disk 1 coded as (E) has a slightly different status than Disk 0 System partition. Disk 0 shows status as "system, active, primary partition" and Disk 1 shows it only as "active & primary". Does this suggest the system info was lost after cloning?

Thanks

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Hey all, thanks for this, i was not expecting any quick replies it being Christmas. I'll check in again tomorrow. Thanks again and Merry Christmas.