Rufus Clone SD Card: Is It Possible Or Not?

Rufus is a free and open-source utility that allows you to format and create a bootable USB drive without installation. It also allows users to easily make a bootable USB drive from an ISO. If you wonder, "Can Rufus clone SD card?" this article from EaseUS will dispel your doubts. In addition, a dedicated SD card cloning tool will be introduced to you.

Is It Possible to Clone SD Cards Using Rufus

How to clone sd cards?
byu/madman_2781 inHandhelds

Many users, as the Reddit post illustrated, would say they can use Rufus to clone an SD card or a USB drive when it comes to cloning an SD card, but is it true? Can you clone an SD card using Rufus?

The short answer is No. Rufus cannot clone an SD card. Rufus mainly focuses on creating bootable USB drives or formatting USB sticks, but it doesn't have built-in disk cloning capabilities. To some degree, you can use Rufus to make an image of an SD card. Then, write that image on the other SD cards or hard disks using Rufus. The following are the detailed steps to write an image to another:

• Step 1. Download Rufus.
• Step 2. Connect the SD card to your computer via the SD card reader and launch Rufus.
• Step 3. Click the disk icon above the "Select" button and choose a location to save the disk image on your PC.
• Step 4. After the process is done, remove the original SD card from the PC and insert the new SD card.
• Step 5. In Rufus, select the SD card image you just made and write it to the new SD card.

Now, you have imaged/backed up the SD card to another one, but this is not cloning because there are differences between clone and image.

What's the Difference Between SD Card Imaging & Cloning

Cloning and imaging are 2 ways to achieve the same goal: copy all the contents of a hard disk to another. However, there are significant differences between imaging and cloning. 

Imaging essentially compresses all the data on your SD cards into something that can be more easily stored (if needed, later recovered). You can even keep several compressed images onto one large external storage device. This gives you multiple options when it comes to restoring an image.

A disk image is a comprehensive copy of your hard drive, and repeating the process will be slow. Moreover, images can fill your backup media quickly. Disk imaging can be a slow process; this might not matter except if you just want to move a hard drive fast with as little trouble as possible. This is where disk cloning comes in handy.

A disk cloning is an exact copy of a hard drive or partitions on a drive. Unlike a disk image, a disk clone is uncompressed. This means it can be quickly moved to a different drive. Once you do this, everything on the target drive will be overwritten, and you will have 2 identical drives.

Disk cloning provides an overwhelming superiority over imaging: it is much faster. Moreover, when you clone a disk or an SD card, you can directly boot from the destination disk with a state where cloning starts. Therefore, you can replace the original without trouble using the target disk.

In short, imaging and cloning are incredibly powerful and reliable technologies that let you back up and recover data on your hard drive or SD card. However, they have their specific use cases. Disk imaging empowers you with the flexibility to reliably and consistently back up storage devices. In contrast, disk cloning empowers you with the speed and convenience of copying and moving your storage devices.

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Clone SD Card with the Best SD Card Cloning Software

If you want to clone an SD card, you must use professional disk cloning software because Windows lacks built-in cloning features. Cloning can help you migrate everything from one SD card to another without losing data, and if your target SD card is bootable, you will get a new bootable SD card after cloning. The point is to find a reliable and safe SD card cloning tool.

You can try free disk cloning software like Clonezilla or Rescuezilla to clone an SD card. However, their UI leaves much to be desired. Worse still, you will need a USB drive to download the ISO file and boot your computer from the USB, which is not user-friendly for beginners. This is where EaseUS Disk Copy, a simple yet powerful cloning program, comes in.

EaseUS Disk Copy is a dedicated and easy-to-use SD card cloning tool that lets you transfer data from one SD card to another with only several simple clicks. It can help you clone HDD or SSD with different sizes and migrate Windows to another disk without reinstalling Windows. In addition, it lets you transfer data from the hard drive of a dead computer to retrieve data.

If you want to clone or upgrade your SD card or hard drive, it can help you well with a seamless data transfer. Just download this powerful cloning software to start SD card cloning with simple clicks:

Prior Notice:

• The "Sector by sector copy" asks the size of your destination disk to be at least equal to or larger than that of the source disk. Leave this feature unchecked if you wish to clone a larger hard disk to a smaller hard disk.
• All data on the destination disk will be completely erased, so take care.

Step 1. To start copying/cloning an entire disk to another, choose this disk as the source disk under "Disk Mode" and click "Next".

Step 2. Choose the other disk as the destination disk.

Step 3. Check the disk layout of the two disks. You can manage the disk layout of the destination disk by selecting "Autofit the disk", "Copy as the source" or "Edit disk layout". 

• "Autofit the disk" makes some changes by default on the destination disk layout so that it can work at its best status.
• "Copy as the source"does not change anything on destination disk and the layout is the same as source disk.
• "Edit disk layout" allows you to manually resize/move partition layout on this destination disk.

Tick the "Check the option if the target is SSD" option to put your SSD in its best performance.

A message now appears, warning you that data will be lost. Please confirm this message by clicking "OK" and then click "Next".

Step 4. Click "Proceed" to officially execute the task.

To Wrap Things Up

Can Rufus clone SD card? Have you got the answer? In short, Rufus cannot clone an SD card, but it can help you create an image of an SD card and write it to a new one, which can have the same effect as cloning for backup and recovery. If you want to quickly transfer your content to another one or replace your old disk with a new one, try to clone it with a simple disk cloning program, EaseUS Disk Copy. Just download and try this excellent SD card cloning software!

FAQs on How to Use Rufus to Clone SD Card

1. Can Rufus clone a drive?

No. Rufus cannot clone a hard drive. If you want to clone a hard drive, try disk cloning software like Clonezilla, Rescuezilla, and EaseUS Disk Copy.

2. Can Rufus make a bootable SD card?

Yes, Rufus is a tool designed to create a bootable disk. To create a bootable SD card:

• Download and run Rufus.
• Select your SD card and Windows ISO, choose the appropriate partition scheme, set the file system, and click Start. 
• Confirm the warning message, and Rufus will create the bootable SD card.

3. How do I clone my entire SD card?

To clone an SD card with EaseUS Disk Copy:

• Download and install EaseUS disk cloning software.
• Connect both SD cards to the PC via the SD card reader.
• Select the source and target SD card in the Disk Mode.
• Confirm the warning message and click Proceed to clone the SD card to another.