How to Clone Bootable SD Card in Windows 10 or 11 (5 Steps)
Why Clone Bootable SD Card in Windows?
SD cards are widely used on tablet, digital camera, smart phone, music player, and play station and so on. SD cards made by Samsung, Raspberry PI, SanDisk, etc., earn great popularity among users all over the world. A bootable SD card could minimize the downtime of the operating system by swapping to another function and work environment.
Generally speaking, a user would like to clone a bootable SD card for these two main reasons:
- For backup. Duplicating a bootable SD card to another place is a good way to protect this bootable operating system. When the original SD card get lost or damaged, one can get the same environment as soon as possible.
- For device upgrading. As a removable storage device, SD card is vulnerable to any damages it receive, virus infection, human error, violent striking, device failure, and so on. Cloning SD card to larger SD card or newer one dramatically improves the performance and security.
You may have other reasons for copying a bootable SD card, but more important thing is to figure out how to clone the device. After all, Windows misses the cloning feature.
Best Bootable SD Card Copier - Qiling Disk Master
Qiling Disk Master Professional is one of the best SD card copier that will help you clone bootable SD card to another SD card, external storage, or computer. With its powerful Disk Clone features, you are allowed to:
- clone a smaller SD card to a larger SD card without unallocated space left.
- clone only used sectors of a larger bootable card if your new SSD card is smaller. So your smaller SD card is still bootable after cloning.
- make an exact copy of the bootable SD card, i.e. without changing the partition's size and layout, by cloning the SD card sector-by-sector.
- clone SD card with multiple partitions, if it has.
- clone all kinds of SD cards, such as Standard SD card, SDXC, SDHC, micro/mini SD card, xD picture, CF card, etc regardless of its capacity and brands.
In addition, you can choose to backup a bootable SD card into an image file with its Disk Backup feature, better to save, if you like. And it even allows you to backup only changed files after the first backup.
Free download this software (safe and clean) and have a try. The cloning software is user-friendly and easy-to-use, so it is suitable for all groups of users.
(Note: this software only supports Windows 7, 8, 10, 11, XP, Vista. For server users, try Qiling Disk Master Server!)
How to Clone Bootable SD Card Step by Step
1. Connect the bootable SD card to a Windows 10 or 11 PC and make sure it can be detected. You may need an SD card reader if there is no card slot. Connect the destination device as well if you want to clone a bootable SD card to another.
2. Install and run Qiling Disk Master Professional. Click "Tools" and then "Disk Clone".
3. Select the source disk, i.e. the bootable SD card.
4. Select the destination disk. You can clone the bootable device to SD card, flash drive, portable drive, internal disk, external disk, etc.
5. On the summary page, preview the operation and click "Proceed" to clone SD card to another one.
If your new SD card is larger, it's suggested to click "Edit Partitions" and select "Add unused space to all partitions" or "Manually adjust partition size". It resolves the cloned drive unallocated space left issue.
- Add unused space to all partitions: It will reallocate the unallocated space to each partition of the target disk, appropriate for the disk size.
- Manually adjust partition size: It allows you to extend unallocated space to any partition on the destination disk you want.
In addition, it's still able to convert disk types, from MBR to GPT or GPT to MBR, and be sure your card is bootable.
Tips:
👉 Sector by sector clone: By checking this option, the software will copy every sector on the bootable SD card. Do not check this option if you clone from a large SD card to smaller one.
👉 You still can use this software to clone disk with command prompt. You need to boot into the recovery environment and then go to Tools > Windows shell command.
Bootable SD Card vs. USB Drive
Some users also wondering the differences between bootable SD card and USB drive while searching for the way to clone a bootable SD card. Here will give a brief comparison to them.
Secure Digital (SD) card and USB flash drive are both great removable storage in transferring and storing small amount of data. They use non-volatile memory to store files. When it comes to the question "which is better for bootable device, SD card or USB drive", following two aspects should be taken into consideration.
- Transfer rate. In general, a USB 3.0 flash drive is much faster than Classic 10 SD card in reading and writing speed. However, a Classic 10 SD card is possibly has same performance than a USB 2.0 flash drive.
- Device capacity. You'll get greater capacity on SD card device than a USB flash drive when you spend the same money.
One of the biggest differences between USB and SD card should be USB has the universal compatibility, which allows it to connect to any device with a USB port. While using a SD card, you may need a SD card reader when the device misses a SD card slot.
In a nutshell, SD card is fairly enough for common use. If you're a speed and performance purchaser, USB flash drive is a good choice.
Conclusion
To clone bootable SD card to another SD card, Qiling Disk Master Professional would definitely help you out within five steps only. Other than cloning bootable SD card, you could also clone bootable USB drive, clone hard drive to SSD, clone SSD to HDD in Windows 10, etc.
Meanwhile, it is a reliable backup and restore software that provides robust backup solution protecting your computer and operating system. If you have these needs, please download this software to have a try!
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