By Emily / Last Updated May 6, 2023

 

Clone of a bootable USB will not Boot

I attempted to make a clone of a bootable flash drive containing the Windows 10 operating system boot files via some bootable USB clone software. The clone seems to seems the same contents as the original, but the drive is not bootable. Am I missing something? Possibly bcdboot; See How to make cloned USB drive bootable? Is there a reliable bootable USB clone tool recommended? Thanks a lot.

- Question from tenforums

Can you clone a bootable USB drive in Windows 10?

Nowadays, more and more computer users copy Windows ISO to USB to make it a bootable drive for rescuing a computer that won’t boot due to hard drive failure. 

Bootable Usb

Since the bootable USB drive is quite important, you might want to clone it for a backup. However, the "Ctrl +C & Ctrl+ V" (copy and paste) method is not working for copying a bootable USB flash drive. Even if you successfully transfer all data from the bootable USB drive to another USB, the pasted boot files might become invalidated and the new drive won’t boot later. Thus, you might wonder how can you clone a bootable USB drive in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 computers with secure boot afterward. This is exactly what we will talk about next.

What's the best bootable USB clone tool?

As mentioned above, cloning bootable USB drive requires the use of a bootable drive cloning tool. But countless similar software might make you feel totally puzzled about which one to choose. To clone bootable drive without boot failure, we highly recommend using AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. It has the following highlights:

Fully compatible with all editions of Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, XP and Vista (32-bit & 64-bit);
"Disk Clone Wizard" is able to copy a (bootable) USB drive to another USB in Windows PC;
Two clone methods available for you to clone either all sectors (used or not used) or only used sectors to another device;
Ensure a complete clone without data missing and successful boot after clone;
Also proper for  cloning SD card, SSD drive and HDD.

Steps to clone bootable USB to another USB free in Windows 11/10/8/7

To clone a bootable USB drive, first of all, please download the free bootable USB clone software and install it on your Windows computer. Then follow the steps to clone bootable USB stick in Windows PC.

Download Freeware Win 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
Secure Download
Notes:✎...
This cloning process will delete all data on the destination disk, so back up everything necessary in advance.
The free version just supports cloning copying an MBR disk to another MBR disk when it comes to cloning data hard drive, if you plan to clone MBR to GPT, GPT to MBR, GPT to GPT, or clone system disks between MBR and GPT, please upgrade to the Professional version.

Step 1. Launch this bootable USB clone tool. Click “Clone” from the top toolbar and then select “Clone Disk”.

Tools

Step 2. Select a way to copy the bootable drive, and then hit on "Next". Here we select "Clone Disk Quickly".

Copy Methods

Notes:✎...
Clone Disk Quickly: only copied the used space to another drive, so it allows you to clone larger disk to smaller disk as long as the destination disk is larger than the used space of the source disk.
Sector-by-Sector Clone: copy all sectors, no matter it is used or not, to the target disk, so the destination disk must be larger the total space of the source disk.

Step 3. Select a source disk from the given list and click on "Next".

Source Disk

Step 4. Choose a target disk and click "Next" to continue. If it is an SSD drive, you can tick "Optimize the performance of SSD" option.

Target Disk

Step 5. In this window, you can adjust partition size on the destination disk. Then, click on "Next" button.

Edit

Step 6. Then you will get a note about how to boot OS from the destination disk afterward. Read it carefully and click "Finish".

Note

Step 7. Back to the main interface, click "Apply" and "Proceed" to start cloning the bootable drive.

Apply

Summary

This powerful bootable USB clone tool makes it as easy as possible to clone bootable disk in Windows 11/10/8/7computers. Besides, it also enables you to transfer only OS drive to SSD. More amazing functions including converting boot disk from MBR to GPT, or GPT to MBR without data loss, splitting a large partition into smaller partitions, extending system drive without reboot are available in the Professional version. If you are running Windows Server, you can make use of AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.