Duplicate Copy of a USB Pendrive?

Forum: USB booting
Topic: Duplicate Copy of a USB Pendrive?
started by: Iang

Posted by Iang on April 26 2006,11:01

Is there an easy way within Linux / DSL to make an exact duplicate copy of my pendrive?

I use a USB-ZIP install & would like to duplicate my pendrive on to a second device so I can experiment with settings, mydsl etc. but if I make a complete pig's ear of things (very easily done given my experience level), I can easily wipe the whole thing clean & go back to my known starting point on the other drive.

Need to duplicate both partitions, sda1 and sda2 as it's the USB-ZIP install.

Seems like it should be dead easy, but how?!
TIA.

Posted by pr0f3550r on April 26 2006,12:29

I'd start with dd,
something like dd if=/dev/xxx of=/dev/yyy

Posted by Iang on April 27 2006,09:43

Yes, that works. Thanks - just the trick I was looking for.

In case anyone else is interested, this is what I did:

Boot up from the pendrive (mine is a USB-ZIP install)

Plug in the second USB pendrive (already partitioned as required)

Mount all the drives (I don't know if this is required, but I did it anyway & it works)

Open root shell:

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1

takes a few minutes, then

dd if=/dev/sda2 of=/dev/sdb2

takes a few more minutes, then job done.

The USB-ZIP install uses 2 partitions, hence the need to copy sda1 to sdb1 and sda2 to sdb2. With a USB-HDD install, only the first command would be needed.

The result: an exact duplicate of the first pendrive, with all settings, configurations, myDSL applications etc.

Only one gotcha - make sure the second drive is at least as big as the first!