How to Copy USB to USB in Windows 11/10 [with Boot Files]

Want to copy USB to USB? This page offers a simple and easy way to copy one USB drive to another USB drive, including all files, applications and even operating system on it.

Delia

By Delia Updated on November 1, 2023

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User Case: How Do I Copy USB to USB (Bootable)

 

If I copy a bootable USB drive to another USB, will it create a duplicate bootable drive? Is it not even possible to copy/paste data on a bootable drive to another USB? Any kindly advice will be appreciated, thanks.

As this user said, simply copying files from a bootable USB drive to another USB will not make it bootable. You need also the partition table configuration, the meta data about the organization of drive content, bootloader, etc.

To copy USB to USB with boot files, you can use backup & restore or disk cloning way.

Reliable Way to Copy USB Drive to Another USB Drive

An USB drive is small and light in capacity with lower power consumption and no fragile moving parts. It can be carried everywhere, and used on a variety of devices, including thin laptops without optical drives.

If you own more than one USB flash drive or external hard drive in hand, you can indeed copy USB to USB, either for migrating data, making a backup, or upgrading/booting another computer.

USB drive

For files such as documents, photos, music etc., you can drag & drop them from one USB to the other in Windows Explorer. However, if the data size is too large, or it includes boot-related files, it's suggested to copy USB to USB in Windows 11/10/8/7 with the help of USB to USB free copying software AOMEI Backupper Standard.

It contains not only handy backup & restore feature, but also a Disk Clone feature which can copy from USB to USB quickly and retain the original format, partition table, etc. Hit the button below to download AOMEI Backupper and follow the guide to have a try:

Download FreewareWin 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
Secure Download

✍The Standard edition supports cloning data disks (both MBR and GPT). If you want to clone USB bootable drive including operating system (boot files), please turn to Professional edition.

How to Copy USB to USB in Windows 10 Easily

AOMEI Backupper is easy-to-use with its lucid user-interface and the perfect support for Windows 11, 10, 8/8.1, 7, XP and Vista. Besides, it offers many useful features, such as Sector-by-Sector Clone, Edit Partition, SSD Alignment.

Here I will use Windows 10 computer as an example to show you the operation with screenshots.To create a Windows 10 or Windows 11 recovery tool in USB, you need a USB drive that is at least 16 gigabytes.

✍The same steps also apply to copying bootable USB to USB (involves operating system), but you will need to upgrade to Pro edition for system migration.

Step 1. Connect the two USB drives for copying.

Insert the source USB drive, and then the target one to your PC via USB ports.

Make sure they can both be detected by Windows.

Insert USB Drive

Step 2. Launch the effective tool to copy USB drive.

Install and launch AOMEI Backupper Standard, then go to Clone tab and select Disk Clone.

Disk Clone

Step 3. Select the source USB and the target one.

Specify the source USB to copy, and then the other one as the destination. Don’t mix them up, or you’ll lose everything on the USB.

Select Source USB Drive

Select Destination USB Disk

Step 4. Start copying USB to USB.

Here is the operation summary. You can also make exact copy of the source USB by checking Sector By Sector Clone, or accelerate a target SSD by SSD Alignment. Then click Start Clone to execute the operation.

Start Clone USB

In advanced editions, you can also use Edit Partitions feature to make full the disk capacity after cloning.
👉 Copy without resizing partitions: It will not resize the partition size.
👉 Add unused space to all partitions: Reallocate the unallocated space to each partition of the target disk.
👉 Manually adjust partition size: Extend unallocated space to any partition on the target disk as you want.
👉 Convert the destination disk...: Convert the partition style (MBR/GPT) of the target disk to make it the same as the source disk.

Add Unused Space

Wait for the process to complete. Click Finish when it done and close the program.

👉Tips:
The steps also apply to copying USB to USB in Windows 11, Windows 8, Windows 7, etc.
Checking“Sector By Sector Clone” will make the “Edit Partitions” option unavailable.
The Standard edition supports cloning all kinds of data disks, such as: clone HDD to Seagate SSD, clone HDD to Samsung SSD, clone NVMe to another NVMe, etc. If you upgrade to advanced edition, you can also clone all kinds of system disks: clone Windows 10 to new hard drive, clone Windows 10 to NVMe, etc.

Another Way to Copy USB Drive with Boot Files

In addition to AOMEI Backupper, you can also use command prompt to make a USB drive bootable, then extract the ISO image file via File Explorer or other ISO burner.

Note: If your USB drive is showing as Removable Disk in Windows Explorer, you can only create one primary partition there. If it shows as Fixed Disk, you can create multiple primary partitions in accordance with its size.

1. Connect a USB drive and Run Command Prompt as administrator. Click Start, type cmd in the search box, then select it from the search result list and run as administrator.

2. In the pop-up command prompt window, type the following syntax and hit Enter after each one.

  • list disk
  • select disk X (X stands for the drive letter or disk number of your USB drive)
  • clean
  • create part pri
  • select partition 1 (This is the partition you just created)
  • assign letter=N
  • select partiion N
  • format fs=ntfs quick (If you want to create UEFI bootable USB in diskpart, format it as FAT32. Type format fs=fat32 quick as instead)
  • active
  • exit

3. In Windows 8/10, right-click the ISO file and select Burn Disc Image, then follow the on-screen instructions to finish the rest of steps. In Windows 7, you could consider using a ISO burner as instead.

Burn Disc Image

4. After that, restart your computer, press F2 or ESC to enter BIOS screen, select the Boot tab and use “+” to move the flash drive to the first place, then press F10 to save the changes. Later, it will go to the Windows Setup screen automatically. If not, the drive is not bootable or something goes wrong.

Final Words

The way to copy USB to USB can be pretty easy with the help of AOMEI Backupper. Actually, as one powerful backup & cloning utility, it is highly recommended to keep AOMEI Backupper installed after cloning.

With the software, you can duplicate a hard drive or USB drive and make the copy bootable, copy Windows 10 to USB drive, or adopt the 3-2-1 backup strategy to save disk space while keeping backup images up-to-date.

If you are running Windows Server, you can go for the specialized Server edition instead.

Delia
Delia · Editor
Delia owns extensive experience in writing technology-related blog posts, and has been a part of AOMEI since 2020 to provide expertise in data security and disaster recovery. She works with Windows operating systems, SQL databases, and virtualization platforms such as VMware and Hyper-V, specializing in troubleshooting and advising on data protection and migration.