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CloneZilla, but if you want to use a GUI then look at RescueZilla (its CloneZilla under the hood but with extra features and graphical user interface). Both are free.
You can use Rufus to write the ISO to a USB thumbdrive, then boot from it.
Might also consider having a dedicated thumbdrive with Ventoy on it and always have tools like these ready to boot.
Yes. Rufus is a good idea.
UEFI enable, also.
I've gone to Balena Etcher from Rufus. I think i had 1-2 issues with Rufus, and never looked back. Both should be fine
You can get an OEM edition of Acronis from most of the brands.
I used the older version of Acronis, their software is great from windows 11 all the way back to XP, I had to clone a government computer from a SCSI HDD to a SATA SSD lol not a single hitch whatsoever.
I even cloned with support assist from Dell once, also smooth as silk, but I prefer Acronis because you can clone an external drive to another external drive without the requirement of one of the drives being the C drive
I would suggest not going the cloning route to avoid problems in the future. Installing Windows again is honestly not that hard.
You can use File History, a built-in tool to backup your data to another drive. You can find it in Control Panel > System and Security > File History. On the new installation, open File History again and click Select Drive. You should be able to restore from a previous backup, and all of your files will be in the place it was before. The only downside to File History is that there's no estimate backup time, but it should show you when you restore.
Acronis has a free trial, there's also cloneZilla
Macrium Reflect also has a free trial as well and can clone disks. I've had good luck with it in the past.
Have they not got rid of the free version yet?
I think it's still available on Major Geeks. I'm still using the free edition as-is, but I'm thinking of switching over to RescueZilla.
Macrium stopped offering the Free version quite some time ago. Now there is only a 30-day trial version.
That's what I meant by "free trial". I wasn't aware there was an actual free version in the past. Apologies for the confusion.
No problem. For years the "Macrium Reflect Free" edition was very popular and a top choice for these things. It offered (almost?) all the features of the paid edition for personal use. But Macrium decided we dont deserve it and canceled it. Now there is only a "free trial version" of the paid version (Home edition), and that trial might be very limited or not, i have not tried it myself.
People can of course still find the installer of the old free edition on other websites and keep using that until it becomes incompatible at some point. But this of course means to trust that third party website with the authenticity of the downloaded file.
For me, the old Macrium download links work (but they're for the "commerical" free edition of reflect)
Hasleo has a free utility that can both clone the boot disk AND convert MBR to GPT layout.
Please ensure this is a UEFI windows install. UEFI enable in BIOS.
I wouldn't even use this installation. Is boot from USB flash and rerun
If you want to clone the entire disk a live cd of Linux with the dd command would probably work, maybe wsl can do it as well?