USB flash drives and USB external hard drives are widespread and convenient because they are small and portable. People tend to save files, data, and the operating system to these external devices. Cloning hard drives is a process of copying the content of a hard drive entirely to another location. To save time and energy, people often clone a hard drive to a USB external drive.
Can I Clone My Hard Drive to a USB Flash Drive
- It's easy to download a folder from Google Drive on to your PC or Mac computer, and the process is the same regardless of your device. This story is a part of Business Insider's Guide to Google Drive.
- Jul 02, 2020 Click Copy. It's near the top of the Edit drop-down menu. This will copy your file(s). If you're copying one file, you'll see the file's name after Copy (for example, if you're copying a file named 'New', you'd click Copy 'New' here). If you're copying multiple files, you'll click Copy number Items (e.g., Copy 4 Items) here instead.
- This way make Google Drive copy folder structure. If you just move the wrong folder, you could UNDO this operation, and move it again to the right folder. Google Drive Copy Files to Another Folder. To copy all files from one Google Drive folder to another folder, please refer to the following guide: 1.
Data Copy and Migration with ease. Full range of copy operations: copy hard disk entirely or a partition separately. Copy or restore the contents of a 512-byte hard disk to a 4k hard disk with no extra actions required. Migrate any Windows OS from Windows 7 onwards, from HDD to a high-performance SSD. Exclude data you don't want to copy.
'Is there any safe and efficient way to clone an HDD to a USB drive? I'm using a Lenovo Essentials laptop that has a small internal hard drive to store data. So I want to make an exact copy of the hard drive onto an external USB flash drive. Do I need some special disk clone software? I should perform a bit-for-bit clone my files or settings to an external USB drive. So I can successfully transfer or backup the data to the USB drive. If you have a similar experience, please help!'
Part 1. How to Clone Hard Drive to a USB Hard Drive
To clone the operating system and the data to a USB drive, here is the complete guide.
The Tool You Need - EaseUS Disk Copy
Applies to Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP
If your USB drive is an external hard drive, you can clone both the OS and data to the external drive easily. All you need is EaseUS Disk Copy. It is a safe and professional disk clone utility to make a full copy of the hard drive. You can use this Windows clone tool to:
- Recover data from HDD with bad sectors
- Transfer Windows 10 to a USB flash drive and more
Now, download the freeware and take a look at the following step-by-step guide to clone hard drive OS or data to external devices.
Steps to Clone Hard Drive to USB External Drive
Click the button below and activate EaseUS disk clone software in advance.
If you clone your HDD to a USB for data backup/transfer or other similar reasons, follow the steps below.
Step 1. Download, install and run EaseUS Disk Copy on your PC.
Click 'Disk Mode' and select the hard drive that you want to copy or clone. Click 'Next' to continue.
Step 2. Select the destination disk.
Note: The destination disk should be at least the same big or even larger than the source disk if you want to copy or clone the source hard disk.
Step 3. Click 'OK' to confirm if the program asks to erase data on the destination disk.
Step 4. Check and edit the disk layout.
If your destination disk is an SSD drive, do remember to Check the option if the target is SSD.
Step 5. Click 'Proceed' to start the hard drive cloning process.
Part 2. How to Clone Hard Drive to USB Flash Drive
To back up or transfer your hard drive data, here is the complete guide.
The Tool You Need - EaseUS Disk Copy
EaseUS Disk Copy is a professional backup tool. It serves to fulfill your needs of data transfer/backup. The partition clone feature enables you to make a copy of the files from one hard drive to a USB flash drive and keep it ready for use. Worlds best hard drive. For example, with this tool, you can easily:
- Upgrade your computer hard drive
- Back up your important files regularly
Now you may know that cloning an HDD to a USB is just one of the many things EaseUS Disk Copy. Download and install the dominant software on your computer, then follow to clone your hard drive to a USB flash drive with ease.
Steps to Clone Hard Drive to USB Flash Drive
Make sure your USB is empty, or the cloned data may overwrite the data on it. The storage space must be larger than the used space on your hard drive or the files on the source device may not be copied fully.
In this section, you need to use the 'Partition Mode' to perform a partition clone instead of a disk clone.
Step 1. Run EaseUS Disk Copy on your PC. Click 'Partition Mode' and select the source partitions that you want to copy or clone. Click 'Next' to continue.
Step 2. Select the target partition where you want to clone/copy the source partition to.
Step 3. Check and edit the partition layout
- Autofit the disk
- Copy as the source
- Edit disk layout.
Step 4. Click 'Proceed' to start the partition cloning or partition copying process now.
Given that data loss happens quite often, you should equip your computer with such a tool to avoid completely losing files. Don't be the one who realizes the severity of data loss after the disaster occurs. Be the one who prevents failure from happening.
Why Do You Need to Clone HDD to USB
People might need to clone a hard drive to an external USB flash drive for specific reasons. Here are the commonest ones:
Data Backup/Transfer
Most users choose to clone HDD to a USB drive for data backup or transfer. It is the best way to protect user data from virus attack, hard drive crash, disk corruption, or any other accidents or free up some disk space, especially when you have a small internal hard drive disk. (If you accidentally lost data on your hard drive, learn how to perform data recovery with the best hard drive recovery software.)
System Clone
It's not rare for users to make Windows portable or do a system clone. By cloning Windows to a USB, you can use your operating system wherever you need it. However, if your target device is USB flash drive, not USB hard drive, you may encounter booting issues after the cloning process. If you do it for system clone or creating a portable device, learn how to create portable Windows 10 on USB.
Conclusion
That's the way to clone hard drive to USB flash drive in Windows 10/8/7. And it can be applied to clone disk to SSD/HDD and other internal or external devices. Whenever you want to clone an HDD/SSD, ask EaseUS Disk Copy for help. If you are faced with these questions and problems, you can solve them with this article.
- How do I copy my entire hard drive to an external drive?
- How do I clone a bootable USB drive?
- How do I clone my hard drive to SSD with USB?
- How do I transfer data from hard drive to USB?
Clone HDD to USB Frequently Asked Questions
If you have HDD or SSD cloning problems, read these related questions to get additional help.
1. What is Hard Drive Cloning?
Hard drive cloning is the process of creating a 1-to-1 copy of a hard disk drive (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD), not just its files. HDD cloning may be used for upgrading a disk or replacing an aging disk with a fresh one. In this case, the clone can replace the original drive on its host computer.
2. How long does Hard Drive Cloning take?
Download Drive File Stream
It depends on the amount of data and the transfer speed. If your cloning speed is 100MB/s, it takes about 17 minutes to clone a 100GB hard drive.
3. How do I transfer data from hard drive to USB?
Download Drive Copy Free
Step 1. Run EaseUS Disk Copy on your PC. Click 'Partition Mode' and select the source partitions that you want to copy or clone.
Download Drive Converter
Step 2. Select the target partition to clone/copy the source partition.
Step 3. Check and edit the partition layout
Step 4. Click 'Proceed' to start the partition cloning or partition copying process now.
Free Download Driver
Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD, DVD, or Blu-ray drive, although it only exists virtually. Image files can be 'inserted' into the virtual drive from your harddisk or from a network drive by just a double-click, and thus be used like a normal CD, DVD, or Blu-ray. Virtual CloneDrive supports up to 15 virtual drives at the same time - no matter if the image file contains audio, video or just simple data. Virtual CloneDrive is fully integrated in Windows Explorer context menus and on top of all it is free!
- A Windows compatible PC with minimum 500 MHz Processor and 256 MB RAM
- Windows XP/XP64/VISTA/VISTA64/Win7/Win7-64/Win8/Win8-64/Win10
- Administrator rights are required to install.
- Mounts images as virtual drive
- Supports all common image formats such as ISO, BIN, IMG, UDF, DVD, and CCD
- Emulation of CD, DVD, and Blu-ray media
- Supports up to 15 virtual drives at the same time
- History of recently mounted images
- Automount last image
- Unmount image with eject button
- Seamless integration in Windows Explorer context menu
- Easy to use - just double-click an image file to mount as a drive
- Virtual CloneDrive is freeware, you may use it at no cost
