USB Drive copy

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: USB Drive copy
started by: tsbl

Posted by tsbl on Mar. 29 2006,19:04

Hi,
I have a bootable copy of DSL on a USB pen drive, would anyone know of a program that will allow me to drive copy it retaining it boot ability.

Cheers

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 30 2006,18:02

You could use the "dd" command to copy the raw USB device instead of copying the individual files.

Or you can use a program called Partimage to do that for you, but you still need to copy the MBR for your USB drive.

Here is an example with "dd" in a terminal window. This assumes that your thumbdrive is located at devicename "sda" and the file is stored in your home directory. You don't want to have your pendrive mounted, if possible, so boot up from livecd instead of from USB.

sudo su
dd if=/dev/sda of=/home/dsl/usb_backup.img

To restore or copy the image file back:

sudo su
dd if=/home/dsl/usb_backup.img of=/dev/sda

Posted by tsbl on Mar. 31 2006,10:25

Thanks cbagger01

will this allow me to make multiple exact copies of the pen drive. I whish to post these to remote users,

Thanks

Posted by cbagger01 on April 01 2006,05:46

Keep in mind that your destination device must be the same size or larger than your original device.