SK hynix is a South Korean memory semiconductor supplier known for DRAM chips and flash memory chips. It entered the consumer SSD market in 2019 with SK Hynix Gold S31, which is a SATA 6Gbps SSD mainly towards gamers. Later in 2020, it also released the PCIe NVMe SSD SK Hynix Gold P31.

If you are planning to replace old hard drive or SSD with SK Hynix SSD, you may be concerned about how to handle the operating system and previous data. In fact, with proper SK Hynix clone software, you can migrate them from the old disk directly without reinstalling.

Overview for SK hynix SSD migration tool

SK hynix partners with Macrium to provide a data migration tool – SK hynix System Migration Utility. It can quickly transfer Windows OS and user data to SK hynix Solid State Disks (SSD) while auto resizing partitions to fill the cloned disk and aligning them for optimum SSD performance.

You can install the SK hynix SSD to your computer and download this tool from the official page. Then, follow a simple wizard to select the source disk and target disk, confirm the operation and start cloning. Learn detailed steps with screenshots in this user guide.

SK hynix System Migration Utility failed

In general, this SK hynix SSD migration tool is easy to use and has basic data migration functions. But there are still some complaints mainly about 3 types of issues: SK hynix device cannot be found; system won’t boot from the cloned drive; transfer speed too slow. I’ve excerpted a few representative comments here:“I tried several times to clone my current boot drive but I could not get my system to boot. I kept getting a blue screen saying the application or operating system couldn’t be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors.”
“1TB HDD with 4 partitions but with only about total of 150GB used content took over 16 hours to transfer them over to the new 500GB SSD.”
“Had to download somebody else’s data migration software because the “free” SK hynix software kept saying it couldn’t find a SK hynix device, even after initializing/formatting the SSD.”

In addition to above issues, a SK hynix disk is required for this SK hynix gold cloning software to function. So if you want to migrate data between other HDDs or SSDs someday, you will need to find another migration tool.

In response to these situations, I would like to introduce another disk clone software with broader application scope and more powerful data migration capabilities as alternative.

Best SK hynix clone software for system or data migration

As technology evolves, people tend to get better performance by replacing hard drives, like from HDD to SSD, SATA SSD to NVMe SSD, etc. In this process, a disk clone software is necessary if you don’t want to lost previous data and reinstall Windows from scratch.

For example, the freeware AOMEI Backupper Standard is a good choice with its complete cloning features. It works for all Windows OS and all hard drive brands. You can use Disk Clone to migrate an entire HDD/SSD including the OS and all the data, or use Partition Clone to copy an individual partition to target disk.

With the intelligent cloning mode, you can copy only used sectors and therefore clone larger HDD to smaller SSD. If the target disk is larger, you can also perform Sector by Sector Clone to create an intact copy of the source disk.

Also, you have the SSD Alignment option to accelerate the reading and writing speed of the cloned SK hynix SSD.

If you want to migrate only OS to target SSD and keep all the files on the old hard drive, you can upgrade to Professional edition to use the System Clone feature.

Also, the Standard edition supports cloning system disk from MBR to MBR, if you want to clone GPT to GPT, GPT to MBR or MBR to GPT, please use the Pro edition. 

How to migrate hard drive to SK hynix SSD | step by step

Preparations:

♦Delete unwanted files and apps on the old hard drive.

♦Connect the SK hynix SSD to the PC properly. If there’s only one slot, you can connect it via a SATA to USB adapter.

♦Download and install the disk clone software.

Steps to migrate OS and all the data to SK hynix SSD:

1. Navigate to Clone tab and select Disk Clone. If you only want to transfer OS to another hard drive, use System Clone (supported by advanced edition) instead.

2. Select the source disk and the target SK hynix SSD respectively, click Next to continue.

3. Check the option SSD Alignment to accelerate the writing & reading speed of target SSD, click Start Clone.

How to boot from the cloned SK hynix SSD?

If you won’t use the old hard drive any more, you can directly replace it with the SK hynix SSD, thus the system shall start from it automatically.

If you want to keep the old hard drive as a secondary storage drive, then you can restart the computer, press a specific key (depending on the manufacturer) to enter BIOS, select the SK hynix SSD as the first boot option, then press F10 to save the setting and exit.

Note if you cloned a SATA drive to SK hynix Gold P31 M.2 NVMe SSD, you may need to change legacy boot mode to UEFI, because a NVMe SSD will only boot in UEFI mode. You could refer to clone SATA to NVMe.

After booting from the cloned SK hynix drive, you could use the Disk Wipe feature of AOMEI Backupper to erase the Windows system partition, or the entire old hard drive.