SD card is a highly portable storage device people use in mobile phones, cameras, gaming consoles, and so on. And cloning is a great idea to create backups or upgrade to an SD card with a larger capacity.
If you want to clone an SD card on a Windows device, you may only use third-party apps. Or, you can use a Linux or a Mac PC, which has a built-in method to clone SD cards. You can also use SD card duplicator devices.
In this article, you may find the detailed process of all these methods.
When Should You Clone an SD Card?
There are a few scenarios where you should clone an SD card, such as:
Before You Clone the SD Card
You should make the following preparations before cloning the SD card so that the process goes smoothly:
Cloning SD Card Using Cloning Software
Some OS like Windows does not have a built-in method to clone any drives, including SD cards. So you need to use third-party cloning software. One easy-to-use open-source application you may use for this purpose is the Win32DiskImager. It is a lightweight free software to copy a complete image of a disk and restore a disk using the image.
Win32DiskImager clones every sector of the SD card to the image file. So, the file size will be the same as the maximum space on the SD card. Therefore, you may only use Win32DiskImager to clone an SD card to an equal-sized or larger storage device.
Here are the necessary steps to use this application to clone an SD card:
you may also use other free apps like Clonezilla to perform the same task. If you want to use them, it’s better visit their official websites or documentation to find out the complete process to clone your SD card.
Most open-source apps only allow cloning whole sectors of the SD card. But it is also possible to clone used sectors only. you may also manually adjust partition size in such cases and consequently, you can clone to a smaller SD card or even a hard drive.
You’ll have to use paid apps for such purposes like AOMEI Partition Assistant, Macrium Reflect v8, and so on. Somefree ones may also allow cloningused files only, so browse the internet if you want to search for them.
These programs are easy to use and the general process is as follows:
