How to Create an Image of USB Drive in Windows 11/10/8/7
Creating an image of your USB drive could be an important thing. It is useful for duplicating a USB drive or backing up contents on USB drive to keep data safe.
Create an image of USB drive instead of “copy the files only”
USB drive is a kind of storage device. It is tiny and portable so that lots of users use USB drive to store their data, like personal files, documents, photos, and so on. In case of data loss, you may want to duplicate the data on your USB drive, and for this, simply copying the files from USB drive to your computer would satisfy you.
However, if your USB drive is bootable, or there is more than one partition on the USB drive, copying files only would not help a lot, and the best way is to create an image of your USB drive.
Creating an image of your USB drive has a great meaning to you. Imaging USB flash drive will make an exact copy of your USB drive, which includes the master boot record. You can use the new USB drive with the copied data without the restoration process.
Preparations for making an image of USB drive
To create an image of USB drive is to make an exact copy of your USB drive. Before that, you need to prepare something for it.
1. Prepare a new USB drive to store the image. It should be large enough to store data on the USB drive you want to copy. If you are going to copy every byte of your old USB, the target USB drive should be as large as the source drive at least.
2. The cloning process will delete data on the target drive, so you’d better backup the new USB drive first if there is important data on it.
3. Find a USB clone tool so that you can create an image of USB drive easily and safely. The best disk clone software AOMEI Backupper Professional comes to help.
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Full Clone: Make an exact copy of your USB drive, including all data, system files, and settings.
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Cloning to Different Sizes: You can clone from a smaller USB stick to a larger one and vice versa. The software will automatically adjust the partition sizes to fit the new drive.
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Support for Modern Drives: It supports USB 3.0 and large-capacity USB drives, ensuring faster cloning speeds and compatibility with modern external drives.
How to create an image of USB stick
Here will show you the specific steps to create USB disk image with AOMEI Backupper.
Step 1. Plug in the USB drives to your computer, install and launch AOMEI Backupper. To create an image of USB drive, here you need click Clone -> Disk Clone.
Step 2. Then, select the USB drive which you want to create image of as the source disk.
Step 3. Here, select the new USB drive as the destination disk. You can also create an image of USB drive to another place like local hard drive, or other external hard drives if you like.
Note: It will pop out a window to tell you that the existing partitions on the destination disk will be overwritten or deleted. Click OK to continue as we have made a backup during the preparation process.
Step 4. Last, confirm the information, if there is no problem, click Start Clone, and it will execute immediately.
Note: If you would like to copy all sectors on the source USB whether they are used or not, tick the box in front of “Sector by sector clone”.
Conclusion
With the help of AOMEI Backupper, creating an image of your USB drive in Windows 7, 8, 10 or 11 becomes a simple and efficient task. Besides, you can use it to backup USB drive, create a bootable USB drive, etc. It should be the best USB image tool.
FAQs about creating an image of a USB drive
1. Can I create an image of a bootable USB drive?
Yes, you can create an image of a bootable USB drive. The cloning process will include the bootable files and configurations, so the destination drive will remain bootable.
2. Do I need to format the target USB drive before cloning?
No, you don't need to format the target USB drive before cloning. The image software will copy everything, including the file system.
3. What should I do if the cloning process fails?
If the cloning process fails, consider the following:
- Check the source USB drive for errors: Use tools like CHKDSK to check for file system errors.
- Check the destination drive: Ensure it has sufficient space and is in good working condition.