How Do I Clone SSD to USB Drive and Ensure Boot?

Need to clone SSD to USB flash drive

Computer users all know that there are many situations that would lead your data loss, such as system crashes, hard drive failures, unexpected deletion, etc. To protect data safety on the SSD, many users would like to make a duplicate of the SSD. Thus, when bad things happen, you won’t lose your data. 

Cloning SSD to USB drives has become a very popular way because USB flash drives are cheap, tiny, and portable. Part of people even would like to migrate SSD to USB drive and boot from the USB drive to free up more space on their SSD. 

Well, can you clone SSD to external hard drive like USB drive, and then boot from it successfully?

Best disk cloning software for cloning SSD to USB drive

Fortunately, there is a way to clone SSD to USB drive. That is making use of the disk cloning software AOMEI Backupper. AOMEI Backupper is professional software for backup, restore, clone, etc.

★ It offers the Disk Clone feature to help you clone hard drive to USB external drive with simple steps. You are also allowed to clone SSD to larger SSD, clone USB drive to another, etc.
★ It is embedded with the Partition Clone feature that enables you to copy a specified partition instead of the whole drive.
★ It ensures a secure boot after cloning, so you needn't worry about boot issues.

It has several editions for different consumers. For Windows PC users, AOMEI Backupper Professional supports Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista/XP; for Windows Server users, AOMEI Backupper Server is suitable. Learn more from edition comparison, and choose the right edition according to your requirements. 

Wanna have a try? Download AOMEI Backupper now and check the following part to move SSD to USB drive step by step.

Steps to clone SSD to USB drive with AOMEI Backupper

AOMEI Backupper is easy to use due to its intuitive interface. Learn the simple steps to clone hard drive to USB flash drive below. Before you start, please:

• Make sure the USB drive is large enough to hold all data on the SSD.
• Connect your USB flash drive to your computer and confirm it is detected.
• Backup files on the USB drive if it is not empty, or you'll lose your data after cloning.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Backupper Professional. To clone hard drive to USB flash drive, here you need to select Disk Clone under Clone tab.

Step 2. Then, you should select the SSD as your source disk and click Next.

Step 3. After choosing the source disk, you need to select your USB external drive as the destination disk, and then click Next.

Step 4. Finally, you will move to the Operation Summary page. Click Start Clone to launch the progress.

With AOMEI Backupper, cloning SSD to USB drive only needs four simple clicks, and you can use the cloned USB drive to boot your computer by changing the boot order in BIOS.

💡 Useful features you may need

• To clone all sectors on the source SSD, tick the "Sector by sector clone" feature.
• If the USB drive has a different partition style from the source SSD, clone GPT disk to MBR USB, for example, please click “Edit Partitions” and tick "Convert the destination disk from MBR to GPT" to ensure a successful boot. 

• AOMEI Backupper allows you to create bootable USB drive to boot your computer in case of boot failure.

FAQs about cloning SSD to USB

Summary 

You can easily clone SSD to USB drive, whether it's using the same or different partition style, and then boot from the cloned USB drive successfully. If the USB drive is larger, you can edit partition size, either Adding unused space to all partitions automatically or manually adjusting partition size, so you can make full use of space on the destination disk.

Besides, it's a free backup software that focuses on long-term data protection. You can also backup SSD to a USB drive to achieve the same effect, and more precisely, it allows you to back up files currently on the disk and changes made later. The daily, weekly, or monthly schedule backup is a good option, but if you don't want to connect it to your computer always, try the USB plug-in feature.