How to Clone a USB Drive for Free in Windows 10?

Why do I need to clone a USB drive?

Nowadays, USB flash drive is very common and convenient. Because it is small and easy to carry, many people like to save files and data to USB. However, when the USB drive may become unrecognized, you may suffer data loss. Therefore, it is necessary to protect the data and files on the USB drive.

Here is an example:

"Looking for a reliable and easy-to-use USB cloning tool... I have two USB drives in hand. I want to clone one (bootable) USB drive to another (newly purchased) USB drive for upgrading. Is there any simple way to complete it? I'm not familiar with computer knowledge, so... Thank you in advance."

Because USB drives are very small, they are easy to lose. More importantly, your USB drive may be infected by the virus of your computer by inserting and pulling it out many times. To avoid losing data in these unexpected events, you can clone the USB drive as a backup copy.

Cloning is different from just copying and pasting files from one to another. Simply copying files is time-consuming and inconvenient, and some key files may be skipped, resulting in portable program damage or operating system failure to start. USB drive cloning is safer and faster than copying and pasting. If you clone a bootable USB drive, the cloned USB drive will remain bootable.

When you see a symptom of failure in one of the USB hard drives, you should clone the drive to another working USB drive for replacement. You can't be more careful with your data, so it's always a good practice to back up or clone USB drives.

How do I clone a USB drive in Windows 10?

Here, we highly recommend the USB cloning tool -DiskGenius, which can help you clone USB drives without damaging the original data. DiskGenius is powerful backup software that lets you clone USB drives. The program works well in disk cloning and is very helpful for copying files on bootable USB drives or backing up USB drives.

During disk cloning, DiskGenius first creates partitions on the target disk and then clones data for each partition. The partitions created on the target disk are the same as those created on the original disk. There are three methods of disk cloning:

Copy all sectors: Copy all sectors of a disk to the target disk, regardless of whether the sector is in use. The amount of invalid data copied in this clone mode is large and time-consuming. But it is the most complete replication method, copying all the data from the source disk to the target disk.

Copy all valid sectors according to the layout of the file system: Copy all valid data from the source disk to the corresponding partition of the target disk based on the file system layout. The data structure on the target partition is identical to that on the source partition. The cloning process eliminates invalid sectors and is quite fast.

Copy all files: Copy all data on the source disk to the target disk by analyzing the file system layout of the source disk. When data is copied, files are rearranged according to the file system layout. No file fragmentation, very fast.

Note:

• If the disk to be cloned contains file system partitions that are not supported by the application program, you can select Copy All Sectors to clone the disk to ensure that the cloned disk is the same as the original disk.
• Copy all sectors and Copy all valid sectors according to the layout of the file system require that the size of the target disk should not be smaller than the original disk; Copy all files allows you to copy a larger disk to a smaller disk, but the capacity of the target disk should not be less than the used space of the source disk.

Step 1. Connect the USB to your computer and run DiskGenius. Click Tools on the menu bar, then click Clone Disk.

Step 2. Select the USB drive you want to clone and click OK.

Step 3. Select the target disk and click OK.

Step 4. Select a disk cloning mode and click Start.

Step 5. If the data on the target disk has been backed up, click OK to continue.

Step 6. When the cloning process is complete, click the Complete button.

Here is the video guide on how to clone a USB flash drive in Windows 10:

Conclusion

To sum up, if you want to clone a USB drive, you can do so according to the above. In Windows, with DiskGenius, you can easily and quickly clone USB drives with just a few clicks. DiskGenius also has more advanced functions, such as system migration, erasing data, and so on. If you have any questions about cloning USB drives, you can contact our technical support team by email and we will reply to you as soon as possible.

Quick links

• How To Clone Laptop Hard Drive to Smaller SSD in Windows 10/8/7?
• How To Clone Hard Drive with Bad Sectors and Recover Data?
• How to Migrate Windows 10 to SSD with Freeware?
• How to Clone BitLocker Drive Using Freeware in Windows 10/8/7?