Perfectly Clone UEFI Boot Disk to SSD: Master the Process

I. What is UEFI? How is it different from BIOS?

UEFI is the abbreviation of Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, and its full name is “Unified Extensible Firmware Interface”. Think of it as the successor to BIOS. And BIOS is the abbreviation of Basic Input/Output System, which means “Basic Input/Output System”. Its function is the same as that of UEFI. The difference is that BIOS will first test the hardware components and then load the boot program, and then the boot program will load the operating system.

UEFI can save the BIOS self-test process and directly start the operating system because UEFI stores all information about initialization and startup in the .efi file, which is stored in the EFI system partition together with the system boot loader instead of in the firmware. , so UEFI boots faster. There is also a big difference between UEFI and BIOS in the interface. The traditional BIOS interface is pure text, and the options can only be set through the keys on the keyboard, while UEFI provides a graphical interface and supports direct mouse operation. Than, UEFI will be more convenient.

The hard disk partition format corresponding to UEFI is GPT, and the hard disk partition format corresponding to BIOS is MBR. If you want to use UEFI boot mode, you can choose the GPT partition format when initializing the hard disk. Compared with MBR, GPT supports a hard disk capacity of more than 2TB and allows the creation of more than 4 primary partitions, while MBR only supports a hard disk capacity of up to 2TB and a maximum of 4 primary partitions.

II. How to judge whether the boot mode of the computer is UEFI or BIOS?

If you need to determine the startup mode of your computer, you can follow the steps below.

Step 1: Right-click on the Start menu and select (Run).

Step 2: Enter (msinfo32) in the run box and click (OK).

Step 3: Find the (BIOS mode) column in the system summary, if its value is (traditional), then the computer uses the traditional BIOS boot mode, if its value is (UEFI), then the computer uses UEFI boot mode model.

After understanding the relevant knowledge of UEFI and BIOS, the following will introduce the specific method of cloning UEFI boot disk to SSD.

III. How to clone UEFI boot disk to SSD?

1. Cloning with Renee Becca

Renee Becca is a tool specially used for system/hard disk data backup and restoration. It can help you back up and restore important data in your computer, such as programs, system configuration, emails, photos, videos, documents, bookmarks, etc. Also, you can use it to clone hard disk (SSD/HDD) and system data. The software provides three cloning methods, including hard disk cloning/cloning system hard disk; partition cloning and system migration. You can choose the most suitable cloning method according to your different needs.

It is very simple to clone a hard drive with the help of Renee Becca, the specific steps are as follows:

Step 1: Download, install and run Renee Becca, select the option (Hard Disk Clone/Clone System Disk) in the main interface (Clone) column.

Step 2: Next, select the UEFI boot disk to be cloned (usually the system partition, and the hard disk partition type is GPT) in (source) on the pop-up interface, and select the new SSD in (destination location), After that, you can see that the format of the target disk below is displayed as GPT, and then you can adjust the partition size or create a new partition below according to actual needs. If you clone the system partition, you can also check (Make the target disk bootable (System disk only) , and then click the (Clone) button to execute the hard disk clone command. The data on the target disk will be erased during the cloning process. If there is important data in the SSD, it is recommended to back it up in advance.

The software’s hard disk cloning function ignores damaged sectors by default, and you can check it in (Options) in the lower left corner. After checking, the software will use the intelligent algorithm to read readable data in the bad sectors of the hard disk as much as possible. When the data in the bad sectors cannot be read, it will ignore it. The process of hard disk cloning will be completed smoothly.

2. How to make the cloned SSD bootable?

If you want to make it able to start the computer after cloning the system hard disk to a new SSD, you can enter the BIOS or UEFI Boot settings after cloning, and set the new SSD as the boot device preference. The following uses ASUS UEFI BIOS Utility as Example to explain.

Step 1: When the computer startup screen appears, press the DEL or F2 Enter ASUS UEFI BIOS Utility, the shortcut keys may be different in different versions, you can observe the shortcut keys displayed in the black screen that appears during the computer startup process.

Step 2: Then select the Boot menu. Set (Boot Option #1) in (Secure Boot)>(Boot Option Priorities), select the cloned SSD.

Step 3: Save and exit ASUS UEFI BIOS Utility, then restart the computer. You can also click here to view the methods of entering the BIOS of other brands of computers/mainboards.