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"Cloning" bootable pendrives

boot usb pendrive clone bootable

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#1 Anfinuo

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Posted 09 March 2015 - 08:31 PM

Quick use of G-Fu, gave those results:
- ImageUSB,
- USB Image Tool.

Any other ?
The best one ?

#2 dummkopf007

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Posted 09 March 2015 - 09:59 PM

I'm quite happy with Dsfok ( << click the link) with compliments to Wonko the Sane for the heads up!



#3 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 10 March 2015 - 08:22 PM

I'm quite happy with Dsfok ( << click the link) with compliments to Wonko the Sane for the heads up!

However Wonko the Sane is still fighting his personal battle to make people understand that when they use as source a drive letter the backup is NOT an image of the stick (or hard disk or "whole device"), but rather of the volume (which is the same as the "whole thing" ONLY if the device is a floppy or superfloppy).

Most recent example:

http://reboot.pro/to...365-cfc-to-cfc/

 

The moral is always the same, if you want to make a lemonade you use a lemon-squeezer AND you need to squeeze lemons in it, cucumbers won't do, unless you want to have cucumber juice instead (which is different from lemonade)

 

:duff:

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#4 DavidB

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Posted 11 March 2015 - 08:21 AM

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#5 Anfinuo

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Posted 11 March 2015 - 09:25 AM

I'm quite happy with Dsfok

Will check it. Thank you.

A question: "cloning" into what?

A clone ?
Maybe it's a "definition difference", but IMO you can't clone anything, into something other that the thing it was cloned from (they couldn't clone Dolly into Billy).
So yeah, I want to clone bootable pendrive into another bootable pendrive. It doesn't have to be directly pen - pen, it could be pen - ("black box") - pen.
Don't care as long as it works, and doesn't require 1337 lines of console commands.

I don't know if it's helping you but I've used the Disk2vhd tool to clone the entire pendrive into a vhd image file.

I don't know either. Does it do what I need ? Or, by the looks of it, just "half" of it ?

#6 DavidB

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Posted 11 March 2015 - 09:41 AM

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#7 Anfinuo

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Posted 11 March 2015 - 10:18 AM

To do this the second pendrive needs to be identical with the first pendrive. Otherwise it will not be "cloning" :D

Why the hell it reads manufacturer, and other stuff, of my "Petri dish" ?
Is it an NSA application ?

#8 DavidB

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Posted 11 March 2015 - 10:32 AM

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#9 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 11 March 2015 - 10:32 AM

Sometimes I wonder WHY exactly our good friend erwan.l developed Clonedisk :unsure: .... :whistling:

http://reboot.pro/to...8480-clonedisk/

 

:duff:

Wonko


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#10 Anfinuo

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Posted 11 March 2015 - 10:56 AM

But the data from the first pendrive is made to work only on a pendrive with the same characteristics (size, heads, tracks, sectors per track, bytes per sector and so on).

There's go my career as a "mad scientist" (at least with that tool) :(

...100% sure that it will work.

David, please...

...Clonedisk...

Does it need two identical "Petri dishes" to work ?

#11 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 11 March 2015 - 11:56 AM

Does it need two identical "Petri dishes" to work ?

Of course not.

A "clone" in this context is a "logical clone".

If you want a "real clone" you will need not only an identical USB stick, but also the manufacturer tool to configure it, including it's serial, and likely you won't have anyway a "real clone" as the actual memory cells in use will be different.

 

:duff:

Wonko



#12 DavidB

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Posted 11 March 2015 - 12:44 PM

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#13 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 11 March 2015 - 02:34 PM

Sure, but still needs a few identical characteristics. For example the size.

If you try to clone a 32 GB pendrive to a 16 GB, Clonedisk refuses to do it. 

Really? :unsure:

Why would that be? :dubbio:

You could tag it as "surprisingly", though I guess that most people[1] would expect that IF it was possible to clone a 32 Gb into a 16 Gb, THEN nothing would prevent to clone the resulting 16 Gb into an 8 Gb one, and the 8 Gb one into a 4 Gb one, little by little you would have infinite compression...

 

I know you mean well :), but quite frankly, you suck at examples :w00t:  :ph34r:, you are essentially saying that the tool called .funnel :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funnel

completely fails when you attempt to use it to fit one gallon of lemonade into a two pint bottle. :whistling:

 

:duff:

Wonko

 

 

[1] actually the very few with a minimum of "common sense", something that is unexpectedly rare instead.



#14 DavidB

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Posted 11 March 2015 - 03:21 PM

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#15 Rootman

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Posted 11 March 2015 - 03:37 PM

I am not sure this will offer any good advice or not.  I have perhaps a dozen USB drives I use, keep up to date and periodically have to create new ones or fix ones that got screwed up.

 

I have a bunch of pen drives and USB Passport drives.  All of which I keep up to date.  I used to image them but as the drives grew larger and even with USB 3 the image taking and writing process just grew too slow, especially when I was generally just updating them, NOT a full re-write.  I have them setup booting from Grub4DOS and using Easy2Boot to boot various ISO and imgPTN files.

 

What I do now is simple.  I use a sync tool to copy the data to a folder on my HDD, I happen to use Syncback. I mount the drive in the PC, click on the profile that copies just the changed data to the folder and then I pull the drive.  I mount all the rest of my drives one at a time and use a different profile that copies the changed data to them.  This was much faster than cloning the drives then writing them back via a whole image.

 

This handles the DATA but not the initial setup or boot sectors.  For that I simply use RMPRepUSB to format it and install Grub4DOS, my boot loader of choice. So for a new drive I use RPMPrepUSB to format it, install Grub4DOS with the same utility and then copy the data to it with Syncback. It works well, makes updating them quite fast and takes a bit longer to create or repair one.

 

BTW: When I WAS using an image tool I was using the old version of Symantec Ghost 11.05.1.  It would allow me to restore to a drive that was smaller, as long as the amount of data would fit onto the smaller device.  But, again, the time to take an image and rewrite it when I only wanted to update a device grew to be too long, the file based backup I mention above took care of that.



#16 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 11 March 2015 - 04:34 PM

@DavidB

I have the utter respect for you :worship:, both as a programmer and as a member of this board :), sorry if I stepped involuntarily on your toes :(.

 

I tried to convey the idea that the example you provided (and ONLY the specific example) was not a good one, and that more generally it is not the fault of the tool if it is used to do something patently absurd, such as cloning a device to a smaller one.

 

And now, for no apparent reason if not to light up a bit the thread, an image, which is worth a thousand words:

Spoiler

 

:duff:

Wonko



#17 erwan.l

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Posted 12 March 2015 - 09:09 AM

Hi Guys,

 

I see CloneDisk is mentionned so I'll humbly step in :)

 

One extra feature is which not well known in CloneDisk is the "skip non partition space" when backuping.

 

Practical case :

-you have a 16 gb usb pen drive

-but you actually have a 8gb partition on it (for whatever reason / could be a device provided by a 3rd party partitioned that way)

-clonedisk will actually do a physical backup (i.e including the MBR) of 8gb and will skip all the non partition space

-you can then restore this physical disk image onto a smaller device

 

I realise this is no more a clone process but a backup then restore but I thought I would share this information since you are discussing devices size when cloning.

 

I guess I could propose the same choice (skip partition space) when clone source to target.

 

This method may have flaws (i for example assume the non partition space is at the end of the disk) but it helped me in many occasions.

 

Feedback welcome as always.

 

Cheers,
Erwan



#18 steve6375

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Posted 12 March 2015 - 08:46 PM

My RMPrepUSB will make an image file from a USB drive (or any drive) using Drive->File. You can backup from the first sector (0) to the end of any primary partition (P1, P2, P3, P4) or just the whole drive (DALL). You can then write the image to another drive using File->Drive.

Images can be zipped up for storage, but you must restore from the uncompressed file.

 

Note however, that you can buy two 16GB drives that are identical in Make, Model and advertised capacity, but they may actually be slightly different sizes (Total capacity).


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#19 Anfinuo

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Posted 12 March 2015 - 10:02 PM

Because he seems to want a tool to clone to ANY pendrive.

I'm maybe mad, but I'm not retarded, so no - I don't want to do that. In this case, I want to 8GB -> 16 GB.

Or maybe you just want to copy only some data from the first pendrive (for example the boot record and the first partition with tools).

I want to "clone" various (AV's, Linux distros, other Live tools, etc.) multiboot LiveUSB's (thank you YUMI creator(s)), I've created\gonna create, onto a pendrive as they're needed, because it bugs me, to have all of it on one pendrive, and it bugs me even more to buy a pendrive (and a frelling case for thee lot of them), for every group\category I want to create.
So I'm just gonna create what I need with YUMI, "clone" it into image file, and then, "clone" it back to a pendrive, when it's needed.

As for the discussion of putting 6 kg into 3kg bag, I'm just a begging mad scientist, so won't participate (and it looks like you're talking about different things, and don't see it).
Although the: "Is clone, really a 1:1 copy"\"Can you really create a 1:1 copy ?" is a nice, mind boggling, and bending one (at least from a philosophical POV). It reminds me of my younger days, when I gave a high school buddy a human BSOD, with a discussion: "Are we are really here ?" :)


Well, off I go to try the various applications you've mentioned.
Thank you.

#20 steve6375

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Posted 12 March 2015 - 10:06 PM

Why not create an Easy2Boot USB drive? You can create image partition files (using MakePartImage) from all your  YUMI, LiveUSB, Rufus, AV flash drives, Live Linux flash drives, etc. and put them all on the one Easy2Boot USB drive.

 

The .imgPTN files are file copies (not sector copies) and so they are only as big as the total files on each USB drive (plus a bit).



#21 Anfinuo

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Posted 13 March 2015 - 10:28 AM

Why not create an Easy2Boot USB drive? You can create image partition files (using MakePartImage) from all your YUMI, LiveUSB, Rufus, AV flash drives, Live Linux flash drives, etc. and put them all on the one Easy2Boot USB drive.


...because it bugs me, to have all of it on one pendrive...



#22 steve6375

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Posted 13 March 2015 - 10:46 AM

Why does it bug you to have it all on one drive?



#23 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 13 March 2015 - 11:07 AM

I just wished to thank Steve6375 for having contributed yet another time to the everlasting confusion between disk drive (physicaldrive or disk) and drive volume (or logicaldrive, i.e the thing to which a drive letter is assigned) with the new twist of introducing the further confusion between file copies and sector copies :w00t: (i.e. completely-unlike-clone vs. clone), and the new unit of "bit" which in the strictly technical use as in "plus a bit" surely will have a future :frusty:.

 

:duff:

Wonko



#24 Anfinuo

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Posted 13 March 2015 - 11:08 AM

I like order.

#25 Anfinuo

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Posted 13 March 2015 - 11:08 AM

Please delete.

Edited by Anfinuo, 13 March 2015 - 11:10 AM.






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