Free Copy SD Card to SD Card in Windows PC [Full Tutorial]
- Necessary to copy SD card to SD card Windows
- What to do before cloning SD card?
- Steps to free clone SD card to SD card on Windows 11/10/8/7
- How to clone Raspberry Pi SD Card?
- Summary
Necessary to copy SD card to SD card Windows
As is well known, SD cards have become a vital part of our new-age technology. These small and tiny storage chips are widely used in portable devices like mobile phone, digital camera or game gadgets to store data. Sometimes, we might need to copy SD card to another SD card for the following reasons:
1. To upgrade SD card to a larger SD card
If your current SD card is almost full and leaves little space for any new data, you may want to copy SD card to another larger card for an upgrade.
2. To back up data on SD card
If you have saved many important files on the SD card and you wanted to make a backup to avoid significant data loss when your SD card is damaged, copying SD card to another SD card could be a nice option.
3. To transfer files from SD card to another SD card fast
Compared with copying and pasting all files from one SD card to another card one by one, cloning the entire card will be a quicker, more convenient and time-saving way to transfer files between two SD cards.
What to do before cloning SD card?
No matter why you clone your SD card, the following work is necessary for a smooth process and satisfactory result.
Prepare an SD card reader
To connect the SD cards to your computer and start clone, you need to prepare an SD card reader: plug your SD card into it and connect this reader to your PC.
Back up anything important on the cloned SD card
Since the cloning process will be erased during the cloning process, please ensure you have moved everything vital to another safe location. For this task, the free backup software - Qiling Disk Master Standard is recommended.
Check the both SD cards' storage space
Make sure the SD card you are cloning to has enough space to hold all contents in the source SD card. If there is not enough space, you had better remove some files or programs that are unnecessary from the SD card to make it smaller to fit into the destination SD card.
Find a proper SD card to SD card copier
At last, you will need a professional cloner that can clone SD card to SD card completely without data loss. Here, we highly recommended the freeware: Qiling Disk Master Standard. The following highlights make it an excellent option:
★ Flexible SD card clone methods: the"Sector-by-Sector clone" can copy both all available files and lost/deleted files from the source card to the destination card. The "Clone Disk Quickly" method only copies the used space from one SD card to another.
★ Bootable SD card clone: it enables you to clone a bootable SD card and you will be able to boot from the cloned disk as well after the clone.
Steps to free clone SD card to SD card on Windows 11,10, 8, 7
With enough knowledge of Qiling Disk Master Standard, it is the time to learn how to use it to copy SD card to SD card in Windows 10/8/7.
Step 1. Install and launch Qiling Disk Master, click "Clone" in the main interface, and select "Clone Disk".
Step 2. Choose the hard disk that you need to clone as the source, you can change to "Sector to Sector clone" disk and click "Next".
Step 3. Select another drive as the destination disk, and then click "Next".
Step 4. Then, you can check the source and destination disk in the next window.
Here, you can also click the "Settings" button to adjust the partition size on the destination disk or tick "4k alignment" to improve the reading and writing speed of the SSD.
Step 6. You can preview the disk cloning operation. Please click "Proceed" to clone the disk.
After data are copied from one SD card to another one successfully, you might want to do:
- Turn off your computer, remove the source and target SD cards, and plug the larger one into your portable device if you copy SD card to a larger SD card for an upgrade.
- Format the original SD card or wipe the SD card securely on your computer if you clone SD card with the purpose of freeing up space for new files, videos, or images. Then remove the empty SD card from your PC and plug it into your device for reuse.
Extra info: How to clone Raspberry Pi SD Card?
Many users are also searching for a way to clone or back up Raspberry Pi SD card for a quick recovery when necessary, so here we also collect some important information for this special cloning job:
To clone Raspberry Pi SD card in Windows
For this task, you can use Win32DiskImager.
Step 1. Install and open Win32DiskImager. Select your SD card you wish to clone under "Device" section.
Step 2. Then click the folder icon to its left to choose a destination location and filename. Once done, hit on "Read button".
Step 3. When it is done, you will see "Read Successful" word.
To clone Raspberry Pi SD card in Linux
Step 1. Plug the SD card into your PC. Press "Ctrl + Alt + T" to open a Terminal window. Type "sudo fdisk –l" to see all the file systems present on your system.
Step 2. Find out the device name of your SD card like "/dev/sdb" based on the size.
Step 3. Execute the "dd" command to write the image to another location.
"sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=~/raspbian_backup.img"
To backup Raspberry Pi SD card in MacOS
Step 1. Insert your SD card in your Mac and launch a Terminal window. Enter "diskutil list" to get all disks and try to identify the ID of your SD card such as "/dev/disk3".
Step 2. Unmount your SD card by the command "diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk3".
Step 3. Use the "dd" command to write the image to your hard disk.
"sudo dd if=/dev/disk3 of=~/raspbian_backup.img"
Summary
Qiling Disk Master Standard can not only help you copy SD card to SD card on Windows PC, but also enable you to clone other mass storage devices such as USB flash drive, SSD, HDD, etc. If you upgrade to its Professional edition, you will be able to experience more advanced disk partition management functions like cloning GPT disk to MBR disk, or MBR disk to GPT, migrating OS to SSD without boot issues, allocating free space from one partition to another one and more.
If you are running Windows Server 2022/2019/2016/2012/2008, Qiling Disk Master Server can be helpful to well manage disk partition.