To copy photos from Windows 10 to a USB stick, plug in the USB stick and open your Pictures folder in File Explorer. Select the photos, right-click them, and select Send to > USB Drive. When the copy finishes, eject the USB stick before you unplug it. If you only want your best shots, view your favorite photos in Windows 10 and copy them into a single folder before you start.
Applies to: Windows 10. Microsoft ended Windows 10 support on October 14, 2025, so a PC without Extended Security Updates no longer receives security fixes; that program runs until October 12, 2027.
Copy photos with Send to
- Plug the USB stick into a USB port.
- Press Windows key + E and open the folder with your photos, such as Pictures.
- Select the photos. Hold Ctrl and select each one, or press Ctrl + A to select all of them.
- Right-click one of the selected photos, select Send to, and select your USB drive.
A progress window shows while the photos copy. Large folders can take a few minutes.
Copy and paste instead
Use this if you want the photos in a folder on the USB stick.
- Select the photos and select Copy on the Home tab, or press Ctrl + C.
- Select the USB drive on the left, and open or make the folder you want.
- Press Ctrl + V to paste.
Copying leaves the photos on your PC too. Keyboard shortcuts and other options are covered in copying and pasting in Windows 10.
Drag and drop instead
Open the photo folder, then press Ctrl + N to open a second File Explorer window and select the USB drive in it. Place the two windows side by side and drag the selected photos onto the USB drive. Dragging from your PC to a USB stick copies the photos, so the originals stay where they are. Hold Shift while you drop only if you want to move them instead.
Copy only the photos from a mixed folder
If a folder holds documents and videos as well as pictures, type kind:picture in the File Explorer search box and press Enter. Only image files are listed. Press Ctrl + A to select them all, then right-click and choose Send to > your USB drive.
Copy a whole folder of photos
To copy everything at once, right-click the whole folder, such as Pictures or Camera Roll, and select Send to > your USB drive. The folder and everything inside it, including subfolders, is copied in one go.
If your photos are in OneDrive and show a cloud icon, they aren’t actually on the PC yet. Right-click the folder and select Always keep on this device, wait for the icons to turn into green check marks, then copy.
Will they fit?
Right-click the photo folder and select Properties to see its size, then open This PC to see the free space on the USB stick. As a rough guide, a phone photo is 2 to 5 MB, so a 32 GB stick holds several thousand. Videos take much more room.
Check that everything copied
Open the USB stick and the original folder, right-click each, and select Properties. The number of files and the total size should match. Open a few photos from the stick to make sure they display before you delete anything from the PC.
Eject the USB stick
Right-click the USB drive in File Explorer and select Eject. Wait for the message that it’s safe to remove, then unplug it. More detail is in safely ejecting a drive in Windows 10.
If copying fails or is very slow
- “The disk is write-protected.” Check for a small lock switch on the USB stick or SD card adapter and slide it to unlocked.
- “There is not enough space.” Copy fewer photos, delete old files from the stick, or use a larger one.
- It’s very slow. Thousands of small files copy slower than one big file. Use a blue USB 3 port if your PC has one, or right-click the folder and select Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder, then copy the single ZIP file.
- Some photos are skipped. Files with very long names or paths can fail. Copy the folder to a shorter location, such as the top of the USB drive, rather than inside several folders.
Frequently asked questions
I can’t find the USB stick in File Explorer. What should I do?
Work through the checks in opening a flash drive in Windows 10.
Why does it say the file is too large?
Some USB sticks use the FAT32 format, which can’t hold a single file bigger than 4 GB. This matters for big videos, not usually photos. Formatting the stick as exFAT fixes it, but formatting erases the stick.
How do I get photos from my phone onto my PC first?
Connect the phone and transfer photos from the phone to your Windows 10 PC, then copy them to the stick.
The official walkthroughs are Move your files to a new Windows PC using an external storage device and Safely remove hardware in Windows.
Matt Jacobs writes and maintains the guides on Support Your Tech, which he started in 2017. He spent most of his career keeping small-business PCs running and still takes the occasional consulting job, so the steps here come from fixing the same problems on other people’s computers. Every guide is checked on his own Windows 11, Windows 10, Mac, iPhone and iPad before it goes up.