Why Cloning Hard Drive Taking Forever? How Long Does It Take to Clone a Hard Drive

Problem - Cloning HDD to 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

How long does disk cloning take is based on how much data on the hard drive needs 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 of data, it is the average speed. Now, have you got your answer to how long does it take to clone a 500GB hard drive? or how long does it take to clone a 1TB hard drive?

🪁Extern Reading: Western Digital Cloning Software

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 EaseUS Disk Copy, the best disk cloning software, to easily clone a hard drive and create a bootable Windows 10/8/7 clone.

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 original disk is old and has bad sectors. If there are bad sectors on your hard drive, the cloning process will also be affected. This is because bad sectors on the hard drive will slow down the cloning process and even fail the process.

2. The target disk has bad sectors or read-and-write problems.

3. 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.

4. The USB connection is too slow to read and write. The USB cable can also affect the transfer speed.

5. The computer configuration is too old. The old setup can slow down any operation.

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's very slow error accordingly. Here are the top 6 solutions to speed up the 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 of data, you should fix it by reading on.

It takes a long time to skip bad sectors. At this time, you can try EaseUS 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 transfer 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 EaseUS Boot Disk to Clone

What if the process takes a whole day to clone 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 - EaseUS Disk Copy.

It is an easy and secure disk clone utility that can help you transfer data and upgrade your hard disk at a super-fast speed. It can help you clone a hard drive with multiple partitions and resize your disk partition during the cloning process. It has advenced sector-by-sector cloning technology, so you can clone a hard drive with bad sectors. Besides, it 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 EaseUS Disk Copy. Follow the video tutorial to fix the cloning hard drive very slow issue:

 

Step 1. Download, install and run EaseUS 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 Disk".

Step 2. Select USB and select your device, click "Create".

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 EaseUS Disk Copy, click "Disk Mode" and select the source disk that you want to copy or clone. Click "Next" to continue.

Step 5. Select the destination disk where you want to clone/copy the old disk and click Next to continue. Click "OK" to confirm if the program asks to erase data on the destination disk.

Step 6. Check and edit the disk layout as Autofit the disk, Copy as the source or Edit disk layout. Autofit the disk is recommended.

• 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 Check the option if the target is SSD.

Click "Proceed" to start the disk cloning or disk copying process now.

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 the disk with EaseUS 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 EaseUS Disk Copy to clone your drive to the new one.

Solution 6. Try EaseUS Disk Copy

Useful tools can make you do more with less effort. EaseUS Disk Copy is the best disk clone software, which creates an identical copy of data from 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 the HDD or SSD with fast speed.

Conclusion

The cloning hard drive taking forever error can be easily fixed if you try the methods mentioned above. The connection cable, disk situation, and disk clone tool have an impact on your cloning speed. Selecting the right connection cable and disk cloning tool can help you yield twice the result with half the effort. EaseUS Disk Copy is the one that can help you clone a 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.

1. 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 mentioned above. But you can assume you are cloning a drive with a 2TB single file on it, and it's a 7200 RPM Drive that can write at approx. 100Mbps, then it would take 4–5 Hrs approx.

2. 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 EaseUS 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.

3. How do you clone OS from HDD to SSD?

You can utilize EaseUS Todo Backup to transfer OS from HDD to SSD without reinstalling Windows. Full guide: How to migrate OS to SSD.