Usb Image Tool

1. Usb Image Tool Iso
2. Usb Image Tool Mac
3. Usb Image Tool 1.70

Summary :

How can you clone USB drives or clone an external hard drive that connects via USB with ease and would not bring any damage to the original data? To clone USB flash drive or clone USB hard disk, you can take a USB clone tool. We will introduce two MiniTool USB clone tools in this post which are MiniTool ShadowMaker and MiniTool Partition Wizard.

The Importance of Cloning USB Drive

ISO to USB is a free and small software that can burn the ISO image file directly to the USB drives, these USB drives include USB flash drives, memory sticks and other USB storage devices, it also supports to create a bootable USB disk with Windows operating systems. Click the image to view full size screenshot. USB Image Tool can create images of USB flash drives and MP3 players mounted as USB drives. It allows you to switch between images with different music styles on your MP3 Player or make an exact backup image of your USB Stick. USB Image Tool works with any device that implements the USB Mass Storage protocol.

Nowadays, the USB flash drives and USB hard disks are very common and convenient because they are small and portable. Many people would like to save files and data to the USB flash drive or the USB hard disk. However, you may suffer data loss when the USB drive may become unrecognized . Thus, it is necessary to protect your data and files on the USB drive.

How to achieve that? Many people would like to make a backup for their USB drives. Copying files from USB drive or USB hard disk to other storage devices is one way. However, if you copy files one by one, it would be time-consuming and inconvenient.

Thus, there is an easier way provided for you. You can choose to clone the whole USB drive or the USB hard disk to other devices.

In order to clone USB stick or USB hard drive, the USB flash drive clone tool is required.

Here, we strongly recommend two reliable USB clone tools - MiniTool ShadowMaker and MiniTool Partition Wizard. These two pieces of free cloning software can help you clone USB drive without bringing any damage to the original data. In addition, these two USB clone software can clone hard drive to SSD.

2 USB Clone Tools

In the following section, we will show you how to clone USB drive Windows 10 with these two professional USB clone tools.

USB Clone Tool – MiniTool ShadowMaker

The first USB clone tool is MiniTool ShadowMaker. It is a professional backup software designed to back up files, folders, disks, partitions and the operating system. It can back up Windows so as to protect your computer from virus attack. It is even able to back up files when the computer can't boot.

Besides, MiniTool ShadowMaker is also a piece of free USB cloning software which enables you to clone USB drive without losing any personal data, just needing a few steps. Also, you can use this tool to clone bootable USB Drive to another USB Drive.

So just get the free USB cloning software – MiniTool ShadowMaker from the following button or purchase an advanced edition to copy from one USB drive to another USB.

Here is the tutorial on USB cloning.

Step 1: Connect USB stick or USB hard disk to your computer.

Step 2: Launch the free cloning tool – MiniTool ShadowMaker, click Keep Trial, and then click Connect in This Computer to enter its main interface. Go to Tools page, and click Clone Disk for USB to USB migration.

Step 3: After that, choose the disk clone source and destination. You should choose USB flash drive as the clone source. After confirming the clone source and destination, you can perform the USB cloning. For more detailed steps, you can refer to the post: Clone OS from HDD to SSD with 2 Powerful SSD Cloning Software.

Step 4: When the USB flash drive process is finished, you will receive the following message. It means that you need to disconnect either the original hard drive or the target hard disk. Or if you have cloned the operating system and want to boot the computer from the target disk, please change the BIOS settings firstly.

When you have finished all the above steps, you can find it is very convenient and easy to clone USB drive or USB hard disk with this professional USB clone tool.

In addition, it can be used as a bootable USB clone tool because you can clone the operating system to a USB hard drive or external hard drive which can be used to boot the computer when some accidents happen.

If you want to clone USB drive or USB hard disk or system disk without data loss, try this free cloning tool – MiniTool ShadowMaker.

USB Clone Tool – MiniTool Partition Wizard

Now, it is time to demonstrate the second USB clone tool.

The second free USB cloning software is MiniTool Partition Wizard. It is a professional partition manager, designed to optimize partition and disk use. It can handle various partition and disk matters with its powerful features, such as analyzing disk space, checking hard drive errors, checking file system, extending partition and so on.

In addition, MiniTool Partition Wizard can also help you to perform data recovery or partition repair when the partition comes across some accidents.

To clone USB drive or clone USB hard disk, MiniTool Partition Wizard has a powerful feature – Copy Disk, which can be used to perform USB clone without data loss. Also, it can be used to clone bootable USB Drive to another USB Drive.

Thus, just get the free USB clone tool from the following button, we will show you how to perform USB to USB migration.

Here is the tutorial on USB clone.

Step 1: Connect the USB drive or the USB hard disk to your computer.

Step 2: Launch the USB cloning software – MiniTool Partition Wizard. Select the USB flash drive as clone source and choose Copy from the context menu.

Step 3: Next, choose a target disk to save the USB files. All data on the target disk will be destroyed during the USB clone process. So back up files in advance. Next, you are required to choose a copy option. At the same time, there are two important things you need to pay attention to.

• For SSD users, it is recommended to check the option Align partition to 1MB since it can improve the disk performance.
• If you want to clone USB drive or USB hard disk to the GPT disk, the option Use GUID Partition for Tablefor the target disk should be chosen. However, this is a paid feature and you should purchase an advanced edition.

Step 6: Read the note carefully. Then click Apply to execute the USB clone. Click here to get more detailed tutorials.

When you have finished all the above steps, you can successfully clone USB drive or clone USB hard disk to another drive with this best USB clone tool without data loss.

This post has introduced two free USB clone tools. Both of them can copy from one USB drive to another USB or clone the system disk to another one without data loss.

Bottom Line

In conclusion, if you want to clone USB flash drive or clone USB hard disk to other storage devices, try these two free USB clone tools - MiniTool ShadowMaker and MiniTool Partition Wizard.

And if you have any better solution to clone USB drive, please share your opinion in the comment zone.

And if you have any problem with MiniTool products, you can contact us via the email [email protected] and we will reply to you as soon as possible.

Creating a full Windows backup by using the built it Windows Imaging Tool, Acronis TrueImage, EaseUs Todo Backup, or Macrium Reflect is pretty common for experienced computer users. However, it's recommended for all users to keep backups in case of crashes or hardware failures. If your system is unable to boot, start up the computer with the imaging software's rescue media and it can restore your system back to the time when you created the image.

Imaging is different from just backing up your files or selected folders because a complete copy is created for the whole hard drive or partition and its structure. The problem with some imaging software is it doesn't allow creating backup images for external devices such as a USB flash drive, digital camera, or MP3 player. Or perhaps you prefer not to install a complete software package just to back up a small flash drive.

For someone with one or two flash drives, it's useful to have full backup copies so you can swap between them when required. Here are 7 free and portable tools that you can use to create backup images of USB memory sticks, hard drives, memory cards, and MP3 players, then restore them when you need to.

1. PassMark ImageUSB

ImageUSB is by PassMark software that make tools like Performance Test, BurnInTest, and OSFMount. This little tool is free and portable with a few very handy features such as being able to read and create images from more than one USB flash drive at once and also write a single image back onto more than one flash drive at the same time.

Everything is laid out into numbered steps. Select the USB drive(s) to work on and choose whether to write to the selected drive or create an image from it. Then browse for the backed up file or enter a new name and press the button in step 4 to start the process. You can verify a newly created image or the contents of a written USB drive, uncheck the 'Post Image Verification' box if you don't want to verify.

Backup images are created as uncompressed BIN files. ImageUSB can write those BIN files or ISO image files onto USB. However, writing an ISO file can be troublesome and you might not be able to read the drive contents properly due to the file systems used by ISO images. A log file is created in the same folder for each BIN image which includes MD5/SHA1 checksums for the file and any verification results.

2. Rufus

Rufus is a USB tool we've mentioned before that can perform a number of different functions such as creating bootable USB media. A lesser known feature added in 2018 is the ability to save the contents of the selected USB drive as a disk image. In this case, the image is saved in the popular Virtual Hard Disk format (VHD). Rufus has an installer version but most users probably just use the portable executable.

Saving the USB device as a VHD file in Rufus is very easy. All you have to do is make sure the USB media to copy is selected in the Device drop down at the top, click 'Show advanced drive properties' and an icon of a floppy disk will appear at the top right. Cick on the icon, give the output file a name, and press Save. The whole of the device will be saved to an uncompressed VHD image.

Writing the VHD file back to USB is just a case of making sure 'Disk or ISO image' is the Boot selection type and pressing the SELECT button to browse for the previously saved VHD file. The useful thing about using the VHD format is the files can be mounted natively in Windows as virtual drives. You can easily view and even edit the contents of the backup image before writing it back to USB later on.

3. USB Image Tool

USB Image Tool is a portable program that can create full images of USB memory sticks, MP3 players, and any other storage devices that are mounted as USB drives. The program has a drop down option to let you select between taking an image of the whole USB drive or just the first volume on the device. That's useful if your device has more than one partition although the boot sector will not get saved in Volume mode.

Select the USB drive, click Backup, and choose the file name and save folder. USB Image Tool backs up drives to an uncompressed IMG file by default. To compress an image file, click the 'Save as type' dropdown when asked where to save the file. There are options of saving as Zip compressed IMZ or GZip compressed IMG.GZ files. Compression might take a bit longer but could reduce the size of a large image file.

There's also a Favorites tab where you can keep backup locations stored for quick access. Some options are available such as creating an MD5 checksum with the backup file, showing non-removable devices, verifying the backup, and defining a naming structure for the backup files. The .NET Framework 4.7 is required for non Windows 10 users. A command line usbitcmd.exe is included for advanced usage, such as in scripts.

4. HDD Raw Copy Tool

Although the name might suggest this program is only meant to copy hard drives, it is also specifically designed to handle all types of media devices. USB flash drives, hard drives, and all types of flash based media and cards are supported. HDD Raw Copy Tool makes a complete sector by sector duplicate of the device irrespective of what partitions or operating systems are present.

On start, you are shown the Source window where you select the USB drive to copy. The next window is the Target window where you have to double click on the File option in the devices list and choose a save name and location. The default save option is a compressed IMGC file although you can select an uncompressed IMG format from the 'Save as type' drop down.

Click Continue and then Start to begin the backup. As the backup file will be compressed, it could be much smaller than uncompressed backup files that will be the size of the whole drive. Restoring a backup is a case of swapping things around and selecting the backup file in the Source window and the USB drive in the target window. An installer version is available but the portable version does the job perfectly fine.

On page two we show you more portable image backup tools and also show how to compress backup files more efficiently.

You might also like:

My issue with all/most of these tools is that you have to have the same size or larger flash drive when you recreate the drive.

I'm going to look into the Easeus ToDo again.

Yes, their main purpose is to backup and restore onto the same drive, not different drives.

Hiya all just FYI – found a way using UltraISO to create a backup image of a USB, extract only the boot sector data, then you just need the file system contents + boot sector data to re-create to other USB. The boot sector data is much smaller than the backup image itself, but I found the image creation was required before I could target then extract the boot sector data, as I couldn't grab it from live USB. Hope this helps, I thought for sure I'd see UltraISO on this list when I saw the title, been using that for a while!

Minitool Partition Wizard Free can resize the partition to fit the USB drive. I used it yesterday with good result.
I also tried Rufus, and I didn't get an error right away, but when the smaller drive was full, I got a misleading message about it being in use.

Hi, Thanks for this wonderful article. Rufus does it very well for me.

@Maxime: are you using backup or clone? Because clone asks for a drive as target (which I am not interested to), not creating an image, so I guess backup. As backup I see Disk or Partition backup seem to answer the question, but both ask to buy a license. AOMEI Backupper Standard, labelled as Free, but is it really free?

I've just installed AOMEI Backupper Standard and it doesn't ask to buy a license for a disk or partition backup. It's possible you may be trying to use a Pro feature somewhere while using the backup option. Not 100% sure of that, just a guess.

Usb Image Tool Iso

PassMark ImageUSB make ISO , why do you say it can be done it has only save as .bin NOT iso

Read the article again, it says you can create a bin file from usb or write a bin/iso onto USB. Where does it say you can create iso files?

The first USB clone tool is MiniTool ShadowMaker. It is a professional backup software designed to back up files, folders, disks, partitions and the operating system. It can back up Windows so as to protect your computer from virus attack. It is even able to back up files when the computer can't boot.

Besides, MiniTool ShadowMaker is also a piece of free USB cloning software which enables you to clone USB drive without losing any personal data, just needing a few steps. Also, you can use this tool to clone bootable USB Drive to another USB Drive.

So just get the free USB cloning software – MiniTool ShadowMaker from the following button or purchase an advanced edition to copy from one USB drive to another USB.

Here is the tutorial on USB cloning.

Step 1: Connect USB stick or USB hard disk to your computer.

Step 2: Launch the free cloning tool – MiniTool ShadowMaker, click Keep Trial, and then click Connect in This Computer to enter its main interface. Go to Tools page, and click Clone Disk for USB to USB migration.

Step 3: After that, choose the disk clone source and destination. You should choose USB flash drive as the clone source. After confirming the clone source and destination, you can perform the USB cloning. For more detailed steps, you can refer to the post: Clone OS from HDD to SSD with 2 Powerful SSD Cloning Software.

Step 4: When the USB flash drive process is finished, you will receive the following message. It means that you need to disconnect either the original hard drive or the target hard disk. Or if you have cloned the operating system and want to boot the computer from the target disk, please change the BIOS settings firstly.

When you have finished all the above steps, you can find it is very convenient and easy to clone USB drive or USB hard disk with this professional USB clone tool.

In addition, it can be used as a bootable USB clone tool because you can clone the operating system to a USB hard drive or external hard drive which can be used to boot the computer when some accidents happen.

If you want to clone USB drive or USB hard disk or system disk without data loss, try this free cloning tool – MiniTool ShadowMaker.

USB Clone Tool – MiniTool Partition Wizard

Now, it is time to demonstrate the second USB clone tool.

The second free USB cloning software is MiniTool Partition Wizard. It is a professional partition manager, designed to optimize partition and disk use. It can handle various partition and disk matters with its powerful features, such as analyzing disk space, checking hard drive errors, checking file system, extending partition and so on.

In addition, MiniTool Partition Wizard can also help you to perform data recovery or partition repair when the partition comes across some accidents.

To clone USB drive or clone USB hard disk, MiniTool Partition Wizard has a powerful feature – Copy Disk, which can be used to perform USB clone without data loss. Also, it can be used to clone bootable USB Drive to another USB Drive.

Thus, just get the free USB clone tool from the following button, we will show you how to perform USB to USB migration.

Here is the tutorial on USB clone.

Step 1: Connect the USB drive or the USB hard disk to your computer.

Step 2: Launch the USB cloning software – MiniTool Partition Wizard. Select the USB flash drive as clone source and choose Copy from the context menu.

Step 3: Next, choose a target disk to save the USB files. All data on the target disk will be destroyed during the USB clone process. So back up files in advance. Next, you are required to choose a copy option. At the same time, there are two important things you need to pay attention to.

• For SSD users, it is recommended to check the option Align partition to 1MB since it can improve the disk performance.
• If you want to clone USB drive or USB hard disk to the GPT disk, the option Use GUID Partition for Tablefor the target disk should be chosen. However, this is a paid feature and you should purchase an advanced edition.

Step 6: Read the note carefully. Then click Apply to execute the USB clone. Click here to get more detailed tutorials.

When you have finished all the above steps, you can successfully clone USB drive or clone USB hard disk to another drive with this best USB clone tool without data loss.

This post has introduced two free USB clone tools. Both of them can copy from one USB drive to another USB or clone the system disk to another one without data loss.

Bottom Line

In conclusion, if you want to clone USB flash drive or clone USB hard disk to other storage devices, try these two free USB clone tools - MiniTool ShadowMaker and MiniTool Partition Wizard.

And if you have any better solution to clone USB drive, please share your opinion in the comment zone.

And if you have any problem with MiniTool products, you can contact us via the email [email protected] and we will reply to you as soon as possible.

Creating a full Windows backup by using the built it Windows Imaging Tool, Acronis TrueImage, EaseUs Todo Backup, or Macrium Reflect is pretty common for experienced computer users. However, it's recommended for all users to keep backups in case of crashes or hardware failures. If your system is unable to boot, start up the computer with the imaging software's rescue media and it can restore your system back to the time when you created the image.

Imaging is different from just backing up your files or selected folders because a complete copy is created for the whole hard drive or partition and its structure. The problem with some imaging software is it doesn't allow creating backup images for external devices such as a USB flash drive, digital camera, or MP3 player. Or perhaps you prefer not to install a complete software package just to back up a small flash drive.

For someone with one or two flash drives, it's useful to have full backup copies so you can swap between them when required. Here are 7 free and portable tools that you can use to create backup images of USB memory sticks, hard drives, memory cards, and MP3 players, then restore them when you need to.

1. PassMark ImageUSB

ImageUSB is by PassMark software that make tools like Performance Test, BurnInTest, and OSFMount. This little tool is free and portable with a few very handy features such as being able to read and create images from more than one USB flash drive at once and also write a single image back onto more than one flash drive at the same time.

Everything is laid out into numbered steps. Select the USB drive(s) to work on and choose whether to write to the selected drive or create an image from it. Then browse for the backed up file or enter a new name and press the button in step 4 to start the process. You can verify a newly created image or the contents of a written USB drive, uncheck the 'Post Image Verification' box if you don't want to verify.

Backup images are created as uncompressed BIN files. ImageUSB can write those BIN files or ISO image files onto USB. However, writing an ISO file can be troublesome and you might not be able to read the drive contents properly due to the file systems used by ISO images. A log file is created in the same folder for each BIN image which includes MD5/SHA1 checksums for the file and any verification results.

2. Rufus

Rufus is a USB tool we've mentioned before that can perform a number of different functions such as creating bootable USB media. A lesser known feature added in 2018 is the ability to save the contents of the selected USB drive as a disk image. In this case, the image is saved in the popular Virtual Hard Disk format (VHD). Rufus has an installer version but most users probably just use the portable executable.

Saving the USB device as a VHD file in Rufus is very easy. All you have to do is make sure the USB media to copy is selected in the Device drop down at the top, click 'Show advanced drive properties' and an icon of a floppy disk will appear at the top right. Cick on the icon, give the output file a name, and press Save. The whole of the device will be saved to an uncompressed VHD image.

Writing the VHD file back to USB is just a case of making sure 'Disk or ISO image' is the Boot selection type and pressing the SELECT button to browse for the previously saved VHD file. The useful thing about using the VHD format is the files can be mounted natively in Windows as virtual drives. You can easily view and even edit the contents of the backup image before writing it back to USB later on.

3. USB Image Tool

USB Image Tool is a portable program that can create full images of USB memory sticks, MP3 players, and any other storage devices that are mounted as USB drives. The program has a drop down option to let you select between taking an image of the whole USB drive or just the first volume on the device. That's useful if your device has more than one partition although the boot sector will not get saved in Volume mode.

Select the USB drive, click Backup, and choose the file name and save folder. USB Image Tool backs up drives to an uncompressed IMG file by default. To compress an image file, click the 'Save as type' dropdown when asked where to save the file. There are options of saving as Zip compressed IMZ or GZip compressed IMG.GZ files. Compression might take a bit longer but could reduce the size of a large image file.

There's also a Favorites tab where you can keep backup locations stored for quick access. Some options are available such as creating an MD5 checksum with the backup file, showing non-removable devices, verifying the backup, and defining a naming structure for the backup files. The .NET Framework 4.7 is required for non Windows 10 users. A command line usbitcmd.exe is included for advanced usage, such as in scripts.

4. HDD Raw Copy Tool

Although the name might suggest this program is only meant to copy hard drives, it is also specifically designed to handle all types of media devices. USB flash drives, hard drives, and all types of flash based media and cards are supported. HDD Raw Copy Tool makes a complete sector by sector duplicate of the device irrespective of what partitions or operating systems are present.

On start, you are shown the Source window where you select the USB drive to copy. The next window is the Target window where you have to double click on the File option in the devices list and choose a save name and location. The default save option is a compressed IMGC file although you can select an uncompressed IMG format from the 'Save as type' drop down.

Click Continue and then Start to begin the backup. As the backup file will be compressed, it could be much smaller than uncompressed backup files that will be the size of the whole drive. Restoring a backup is a case of swapping things around and selecting the backup file in the Source window and the USB drive in the target window. An installer version is available but the portable version does the job perfectly fine.

On page two we show you more portable image backup tools and also show how to compress backup files more efficiently.

You might also like:

My issue with all/most of these tools is that you have to have the same size or larger flash drive when you recreate the drive.

I'm going to look into the Easeus ToDo again.

Yes, their main purpose is to backup and restore onto the same drive, not different drives.

Hiya all just FYI – found a way using UltraISO to create a backup image of a USB, extract only the boot sector data, then you just need the file system contents + boot sector data to re-create to other USB. The boot sector data is much smaller than the backup image itself, but I found the image creation was required before I could target then extract the boot sector data, as I couldn't grab it from live USB. Hope this helps, I thought for sure I'd see UltraISO on this list when I saw the title, been using that for a while!

Minitool Partition Wizard Free can resize the partition to fit the USB drive. I used it yesterday with good result.
I also tried Rufus, and I didn't get an error right away, but when the smaller drive was full, I got a misleading message about it being in use.

Hi, Thanks for this wonderful article. Rufus does it very well for me.

@Maxime: are you using backup or clone? Because clone asks for a drive as target (which I am not interested to), not creating an image, so I guess backup. As backup I see Disk or Partition backup seem to answer the question, but both ask to buy a license. AOMEI Backupper Standard, labelled as Free, but is it really free?

I've just installed AOMEI Backupper Standard and it doesn't ask to buy a license for a disk or partition backup. It's possible you may be trying to use a Pro feature somewhere while using the backup option. Not 100% sure of that, just a guess.

Usb Image Tool Iso

PassMark ImageUSB make ISO , why do you say it can be done it has only save as .bin NOT iso

Read the article again, it says you can create a bin file from usb or write a bin/iso onto USB. Where does it say you can create iso files?

You can delete .bin and write .iso manually. It will work.

I can delete any file extension and write in another file extension. Does that change the actual file?

Nope.

These tools are indeed very interesting. My specific need is to copy the folders and files on a USB flash memory stick, where one folder is specifically for 'shortcuts', i.e. hyperlinks to various folders, which works as a kind of table of contents. Everything else that I need to back up works using copy and paste, but not the hyperlinks, which link to the old drive and not the new drive. Is there a solution to this, other than imaging? I mean is there a solution that does not tie up so much empty disk space? If not, then I will work with the limitations of imaging.

I did not like any of these flash drive imaging utilities as they only save the complete flash drive image which I do not like as they all create a very large full drive image regardless how small data you have on your flash drive.
Let me explain, if I have a large 256 GB flash drive and I only have a 10 GB data on this drive, all of the above mentioned programs will save the full and complete 256 GB image instead of just the 10 GB data, a complete waste of unnecessary space as they create a very large backup image file.
Unfortunately the popular Macrium Reflect imaging program does not recognize flash drives so this program will not work.
Luckily, the latest Acronis True Image 2018 build 12510 will successfully backup only the 10 GB data image and this backup image file will be much smaller than taking the full (unnecessary) 256 GB flash drive like all the above listed programs do.
Acronis TI is not free but it is the only one I found to do exactly what I want and need.
If you do know of another program that will do exactly what Acronis TI can do and is FREE then please share it here with us all.
Thank you

Easeus ToDo Backup Free is free and can do the same: an image of the only>

Failed to backup linux SD card, not even when doing sector by secotr copy, still fails ( all other programs handle that). Lots of popups asking to buy all the time… feel like scam program.

Stay away I say.

Experienced users will also achieve a MUCH smaller image by first deleting large or excess files: (ALL of these will be regenerated upon next BOOT)
Pagefile.sys
c:windowsprefetch
c:windowstemp
Other TEMP folders
Other TEMPORARY folders
Useless .BAK; .TMP; .OLD files
OFFLINE WEB PAGES
SOFTWAREDISTRIBUTION
INSTALLER
OFFLINE WEB PAGES
SOFTWAREDISTRIBUTION

I know your comment is now 2 years old, but I hope my suggestion will be helpful to those finding this article –
Today (June 2020), AOMEI Backupper just does that on Windows, for free.

I succeeded in backuping a 32 GB flash disk into a 586 MB image, and another 32 GB flash disk to a 6.55 GB image.
The first flash disk was a Dell Restore & Recovery USB media, made with Dell Direct Key Creator (used to restore Dell machines to their factory state).
The second one was a standard Windows 10 Installation disk, made with Windows 10 Media Creation Tool.

Each time, I made the backup image, formatted the drive, and restored the image back to the same drive. Everything was OK, and all restored disks were both bootable and working.
I did not test any other schemas, such as restoring on a smaller or different drive.

The free (Standard) version of AOMEI Backupper is said to be slower than the paid version, but my 32 GB stick (USB 2.0) was backuped quite quickly, as well as my USB 3.0 32 GB stick (Patriot Memory Supersonic). The Patriot (containing the Windows 10 image) was backuped in 1 minute, and restored in two minutes.

On Linux, you could use the classic dd command with the conv=sparse option.

Flash drives have gotten so large and cheap that it is common to have a little 500 MB bootable image on a 32 GB flash drive. Since these tools make uncompressed image files, imaging such a flash drive can waste a LOT of space. So the obvious solution is to compress the image files.

What tool(s) would you recommend for that? Which tools happily work with such enormous files, and which are fast enough to not be overly painful to use?

One other thought: to make an image file which is maximally compressible, you should first zero-out the free-space on your flash drive, before making the image file. The easiest way to do that is with Mark Russinovich's SDelete tool.

For example, if your flash drive is F: then do this from an administrator-level command prompt:

sdelete64 -z f:

You can download SDelete (which includes both 32-bit and 64-bit versions) here:
docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sdelete

Great tip, thanks!
I've been looking for a way to make smaller images. I also suspect that the longer way(without the zeroing part) causes much more wear and tear on the flash drive's memory.

Dave,
Thanks for the info.

I know this is old but hopefully you are still tracking it. It is not working for me. I am probably missing something. I ran sdelete prior to PassMark ImageUSB as indicated, but still got an image file as big as the flash drive total size. This is the process I am using. Could you please help?
1- run sdelete on the flash drive
2- create image with PassMark ImageUSB

thanks,

sdelete is to make the compressed file smaller, you have to compress the image file with for example 7zip or WinRAR, the resulting file will be smaller than the file without running sdelete first because those clusters might be different from zero ( when you delete data you only delete the MBR entry but the data still remains so it's possible to recover as long as you don't add more data that can overwite it ).

Hi All, Thanks RAY for another wonderful article, System Image of USB drives was beyond my thinking ! I tried the robust option : USB Image Tool ( RMPrepUSB for future ) but it takes considerable time to image even a 8gb pendrive on a quite speedy system ! I would like to ask what will be the Best + Fast + Versatile way to image a single vs multiple partitioned USB drive ? In the meantime i would like to explore the installed Macrium Reflect Free for the purpose ! Thanks & Regards.

As always, we are accustomed to your good articles. Thank you.

Thank u very much. But as u said the image files are as big as the flash drives no matter how much data they contain. Is there any app that will create image files sizing according to the size of the contents in the flash drive?

Which one (if any) can copy a GPT partitionned USB key ?
I failed with ImageUSB.

I would think options 3 or 4 can do that as they copy the whole drive starting from sector 0.

Really useful as usual,
many thanks

marvelous ray!

Another great tool. Thanks!

Usb Image Tool Mac

Thanks Raymond.

Usb Image Tool 1.70