Easy Way to Clone SD Card to Larger Card [Windows 10/11 ]

Why Clone SD Card to Larger Card?

Is your phone constantly nagging you about storage? Is your Raspberry Pi frozen because your SD card is full? Or are you stuck deleting old photos from your camera to make room for new ones? If you've ever faced these frustrations, you've likely considered just buying a larger SD card.

But here's the catch: dragging files back and forth is time-consuming and tedious - no one wants to tackle such a monotonous and error-prone task. This is precisely one of the most compelling reasons to clone SD card to larger card, which seamlessly copies everything over to a new SD card. With it, you can quickly upgrade or replace SD cards, transfer data, or use it for backup purposes.

Crucial Pre-Clone Procedures

1️⃣ A New, Larger SD Card: This is your destination card. Be sure it is larger in capacity than your current card and comes from a reputable brand, such as Samsung, SanDisk, Lexar, PNY, etc.

2️⃣ A Reliable SD Card Reader: Using a high-quality USB 3.0 SD card reader ensures a stable connection and faster transfer speeds, thereby minimizing the risk of errors during data cloning.

3️⃣ ⚠️ Data Safety First: Create a Backup! This is the most important step. The cloning process will completely erase the target card and data on it. You need to backup them (if there are) first.

4️⃣ Clean Up Your Old Card (Highly Recommended): If possible, connect your SD card and delete any unnecessary files. Cloning an SD card with smaller data is much faster.

Powerful Cloning Tool: Clone SD Card to Larger Card in 5 Steps

AOMEI Cloner is one of the best disk cloning software for Windows that can clone an entire SD card, including all partitions and data, to another in Windows 7, 8, 10, 11, and Windows Server, and resize partitions of a larger card automatically.

By default, this software uses intelligent clone mode, which clones only the used sectors of a drive. To be on the safe side, it’s suggested to use sector by sector clone while cloning Raspberry Pi SD card (containing the OS) to larger card.

Step 1. Connect the larger SD card to your computer using a reliable SD card reader. Then, open AOMEI Cloner after installing and click Clone > Disk Clone.

Step 2. Select the two SD cards in the Source Disk and Destination Disk windows. Click Next after each selection.

Warning: The destination card will be overwritten or deleted. Make sure to select the right SD card and backup your important data (if there is) in advance. Then, click OK to continue.

Step 3. Click Edit Partitions, and you’ll see that the Add unused space to all partitions option is checked by default. It means the partitions will be resized automatically. At last, click Start Clone to clone SD card to bigger card.

⚠️Notes:
✅ SSD Alignment: It’s designed to accelerate the reading and writing speed of SSD disks.
✅ Edit Partitions: It’s primarily used to resize hard drive during cloning and convert disk types between MBR and GPT (if necessary).
❌ Sector by Sector Clone: A cloning mode can clone all sectors of a drive, including empty sectors and bad sectors. Check this while cloning Raspberry Pi SD card.

Download AOMEI Cloner for easy cloning!

FAQs

1. Why can't I just copy and paste the files to the new SD card?

Copy and Paste requires endlessly repeating this action until all files are copied- it’s time-consuming and complex. It won’t work for a Raspberry Pi SD card as it hoststhe entire operating system.

2. My new, larger card shows the same amount of space as the old one after cloning. What went wrong?

Nothing went wrong. The cloning process creates a replica as the original card unless you resize it.

3. Do I need to use the "Sector-by-Sector" clone option?

Generally, no. This option copies every single sector on the drive, including empty ones, which takes much longer and provides no benefit if you just want to migrate data from smaller card to a larger card. Only use this option if you need an *exact* forensic duplicate.

Conclusion

Cloning SD card to larger card is much easier than dragging and dropping files - it takes just a few clicks instead of endless dragging and dropping. While drag-and-drop seems straightforward, it remains tedious and monotonous when handling an entire SD card. Moreover, you risk missing files in the process.