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How do I clone a Surface Pro 3?

I have a healthy Surface Pro 3. I need to copy all of the programs, settings, files, etc. from it and onto another Surface Pro 3. I've read that standard system cloning software such as Ghost has problems doing this task on a Surface Pro 3. What is the most simple and most reliable method to clone a Surface Pro 3?

cwstad2

Hi it requires a bit of an effort, but this how to should put you on the right track

backup surface pro 3

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Maclean

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jd1114

ASKER

Thanks for your posts. Maclean, your solution looks the best. Do you have personal experience with implementing it? I have to be sure that it will work because I am swapping the "source" Surface for another one (the "target" Surface) at a Microsoft store and won't have a chance to have both Surfaces together for any length of time.

Maclean

I had a client quite a bit back with a broken Surface Pro 3 using Windows 10 when it was just new.
There was some difficulty I recall, but eventually creating a recovery DVD/USB from the new surface, booting from that, then selecting the System Image taken from the broken one worked.
I vaguely recall we had to rename the new Surface to have the same name as the new one, and post restoring we had to re-activate Windows 10, for which we had to pull the license out of the new Surface BIOS using "ProduKey" utility.

But besides that it all appeared fine.

I had a quick google as with everything I cannot guarantee things will go flawless. But here is an article on system restore, and a forum with a guy who seems to have nearly the exact same experience as I had judging from his solution comments.

System Image
Forum URL