[Easy] How to Clone USB Drive to Another Windows 10

How Can I Clone USB Drive That Is Bootable

"I have a bootable USB drive with Windows 10 on it. I want to copy it to another USB drive. I plan to simply copy and paste the files over. But my friends tell me that it won't work, and I have to create an image of the bootable USB drive and restore it to another drive. How can I do it? What's the fastest and easiest way to clone USB drive to another?"

Why Need to Clone USB Drive Rather Than Copy the Files

Usually, when it comes to USB drive backup, users are thinking to manually copy the files from USB drive to the computer or to another USB flash drive. And you can copy them back whenever you want to restore them to the USB drive. It is an efficient way if you just want to keep the personal files and documents on the USB drive.

But if you want to back up your bootable USB drive, this method is not workable. Copy-and-paste or drag-and-drop doesn't copy the drive's master boot record, and partition tables, which are hidden files. Besides, if you need to copy files from a single non-bootable USB drive to multiple units with an identical capacity, cloning USB maybe your quickest solution.

Then, how to clone USB drive, or even clone USB to USB? You should clone USB with reliable disk cloning software - Qiling Backup to create an exact copy of its contents, including the master boot record (MBR), slack space, and any unused space.

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How to Clone USB Drive with Qiling Disk Cloning Software

Qiling Backup is a capable backup software that you can rely on to clone USB drive. Working well in disk clone, the program is extremely helpful to duplicate bootable USB drive or back up files on the USB drive.

It allows you to clone USB in two different ways: one is directly cloning USB to USB, and the other is creating an image of your USB drive, and you can easily restore that image to another USB drive or to the original USB drive sometime later.

How to Clone USB to USB with a Few Clicks

Step 1. Insert both the USB flash drives to the available USB ports on your computer. Check if Windows recognized them correctly. Now launch Qiling Backup. Let's assume that you wish to clone USB disk 1 to USB disk 2. Expand the home menu and choose "Clone".

Step 2. Choose the USB disk 1 as the source disk and click "Next".

Step 3. Choose the USB disk 2 (with an equal size or larger size than the disk 1) as the destination disk and click "Next".

Step 4. Preview a disk layout and click "Proceed".

How to Create Image of USB Drive to Clone USB

Imaging USB drive is an efficient way to back up your USB drive. You can then take that saved image and clone multiple USB sticks. Qiling Backup, an easy USB image creator, enables you to back up your USB drive by creating an image, which consists of all visible and hidden files and the USB drive's unused space.

The difference between creating an image of USB drives and cloning USB drives is that you need to restore the image later. See the step by step guide below to learn how to image USB to USB.

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Important Things:

Connect all of the USB or other external devices to your computer, PC, or laptop.
Download and launch Qiling Backup on your computer.

Then, you can follow the detailed steps below:

Step 1. Open Qiling Backup and select "Disk/Partition backup" to start.

Step 2. Select one of the USB that you want to backup. And select the other USB as the destination to save your USB data.

Basic Settings:

Sector by sector backup - All the data sectors and blank ones are to be backed up with Sector by sector backup checked. It is useful when file system error occurs. It slows down the backup speed with a relatively larger image compared with normal backup.

Destination - Click the folder icon to modify your backup destination.

Plan name and Description - An accurate plan name and appropriate description will help you distinguish easily.

Backup strategy settings are useful when you want to create a flexible and automatic backup plan.

A schedule is to create an automatic backup plan.

Backup options are to edit the advanced parameters. Image-reserve strategy is to reserve the limited image as per image retention rule.

Step 3. Then you can click proceed to start to back up USB to USB.

After creating an image of USB drive, you can transfer the USB image back to a USB stick with a capacity matching the original storage device. How to restore the created image? Use Qiling backup software again to restore your USB image with a few clicks. Go to click the "Recovery" button on Disk/Partition Backup column. Choose the backup image version to restore your USB image.

To Sum Up

In conclusion, if you want to clone USB drive, you have to ways to complete - clone USB flash drive directly or back up and restore USB drive by creating USB drive image. With several clicks, you can easily and quickly clone USB drive to another USB drive in Windows 10/8/7 with the help of Qiling Backup.

It has more advanced features, such as migrate Windows 10 to SSD using the System Transfer function, create an emergency disk, wipe data, and more. And if you have any problem with cloning USB drive, you can contact our tech support team via email support@idiskhome.com, and we will reply to you as soon as possible.

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Clone USB Drive Frequently Asked Questions

If you have more problems on how to clone a USB drive like displayed below, you can see the brief guides here.

How do I clone a USB flash drive?

To clone a USB flash drive, you can use create an image of USB flash drive, and restore the image to the target drive later. All these jobs can be easily finished with a USB backup tool - Qiling Backup.

Step 1. Connect your USB flash drive to your PC/laptop.

Step 2. Launch and Qiling Backup on your PC and click "Disk/Partition" on the home screen. Or, click the menu icon at the left top corner, and choose Disk/Partition Backup.

Step 3. Choose the USB that you want to image, and select another USB flash drive as the destination disk to save the backup image of the selected USB data.

Step 4. Click "Proceed" to start clone USB to USB now. When the process finishes, you can unplug the USB flash drive. And all the data on the source USB flash drive will appear on the target USB flash drive one been restored.

How do I clone a USB drive in Windows 10?

To clone USB drive in Windows 10, the easiest way is to use Qiling Backup, which enables you to clone an HDD, SSD, USB flash drive, or other external hard drives with simple clicks.

Step 1. Launch Qiling Backup and select the "Clone" feature from the list on the left.

Step 2. Select your USB flash drive as the source disk and click "Next".

Step 3. Choose a destination disk, which can be another USB drive, HDD, or an SSD. Make sure that the destination disk is larger than your USB drive. Then, click "Next".

Step 4. Preview the disk layout and click "Proceed".

Can I copy bootable USB to another?

You can't just copy and paste a bootable flash drive to another. You can't copy the master boot record or partition tables. Instead, you can easily achieve the goal by cloning. You can clone bootable USB drive to another with the best disk cloning software, like Qiling Backup.

How do I transfer photos from USB to USB?

The quickest way to transfer a lot of photos from USB to USB is by cloning USB drive.

Steps to clone USB drive to transfer files with Qiling cloning software:

Step 1. Plug both the USB flash drives to your computer. Start Qiling disk/partition cloning tool.

Step 2. Choose the USB disk 1 as the source disk and click "Next". Choose the USB disk 2 (with an equal size or larger size than the disk 1) as the destination disk and click "Next".

Step 3. Preview the disk layout and click "Proceed" to begin to clone USB and transfer photos from USB to USB.