Can I copy a bootable USB drive to another USB drive?
“I have two USB drives, a 32GB Shandi USB drive and a 64GB Samsung USB drive. Now, I want to clone the Shandi USB drive to a larger and faster Samsung USB drive. I would like to know if it is possible to clone the USB drive to another USB drive. If so, what should I do? Thank you!”
-Questions from Answers.microsoft.com
Why do I need to clone a USB drive?
Nowadays, USB drives are a very popular data storage medium because they are small in size and easy to carry. Many users choose to save important files to a USB drive. And to avoid being unable to recognize the USB drive when data is lost, you may need to back up the files on the USB drive.
For this reason, if you only have personal files or documents, you can copy files from one USB drive to another using “Ctrl+C” and “Ctrl+V”. However, if this USB drive is bootable and contains startup files, this method will render your startup files useless and you will not be able to boot through the USB drive. Therefore, you can choose to clone the USB drive. This allows for easy transfer of massive amounts of data and bootable files to another USB drive.
Recommended free cloning USB drive tool for Windows PCs
In order to clone (bootable) a USB drive, a USB drive cloning tool is required. Here, we suggest Aomei Partition Assistant Professional Edition. This free cloning software can easily help you copy USB drives without losing raw data in Windows 11/10/8/7 and Windows XP/Vista systems. In addition, this tool can also clone SD cards, storage cards, HDDs, SSDs to other data storage devices, etc.
In addition, it also has many other exciting features:
❥ can completely erase all data on the disk.
❥ You can use a bootable USB drive to enter WinPE mode to perform some special operations, such as formatting the C drive, wiping the system disk, etc
❥ allows you to easily rebuild MBR to handle certain Windows startup issues.
❥ Support creating portable bootable USB drives, CDs, or ISO.
How to clone a USB drive in Windows 11/10/8/7?
In this section, we will guide you on how to copy a USB drive to another disk in Windows 11/10/8/7 using the free Aomei Partition Assistant Professional Edition. Firstly, please click the button below to download the free software and connect the USB drive and target disk to your computer to check if the computer can successfully detect the USB drive.
Free download of professional version
Win 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
Note: This cloning process will delete data stored on the target disk, so please backup the data on the target disk in advance.
Step 1. Install and run the USB cloning utility on a Windows computer, click on “All Tools” in the left panel, and then select “Clone Hard Disk”.
All tools clone disks
Step 2. There are two copying methods for you to choose from. Select one as needed, and then click “Next”. Here, we choose the default method.
Choose cloning method
① “Quick Clone Hard Disk” copies the used space on the USB drive to the target disk, where you can clone the USB drive to a smaller drive.
② Sector to sector cloning copies each sector to the target disk, which requires the target disk to be equal to and larger than the source disk.
Step 3. In this window, you need to select the USB drive you plan to clone, and then click “Next”.
Select source disk
Step 4. Now, you can select the target disk to save all the content on the USB drive. If the target disk is an SSD drive, you can check “Optimize SSD Hard Drive Performance”.
Select target disk
Step 5. Here, you will be able to adjust the partition size as needed. After completing all operations, click “Next”.
Edit disk partition
Step 6. Then click “Finish” to confirm this operation and return to the main window.
complete
Step 7. In the main interface, click “Submit” and “Continue” to perform this disk cloning operation.
Submit
With a few clicks, you can easily use the Aomei Partition Assistant Professional Edition to achieve USB cloning in Windows 11/10/8/7.
The above is the software recommendation and detailed operation steps for cloning USB drives. The free Aomei Partition Assistant Professional Edition can clone data between MBR and GPT disks, from MBR to MBR cloning systems. System disks can also be cloned from MBR to GPT, GPT to MBR, or GPT to GPT, achieving lossless MBR to GPT conversion. In addition, there are more advanced features, such as allocating available space from one partition to another, restoring deleted partitions, partitioning partitions, and so on.
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