Writing image files to USB drives

Writing Image files to USB Drives
Image files are byte-by-byte copies of removable media (DVD, CD, hard drives and USB Drives). This is particularly useful when booting operating systems from usb because they include file-systems/partitions, all of which is included within a single compilation file making switching between environments very easy.

Win32-imagewriter
https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/+download


 * Download and Extract the application from archive, it is recommended to use v0.1 as it will allow you to write a large image on to a small usb stick.
 * Run Win32DiskImager.exe by right-clicking on the icon click Run as Administrator
 * Click the Folder button and browse for image file (.IMG)
 * In the device section select your USB drive (double check in my computer, just to be sure.)
 * Click Write, and wait.
 * When its finished click Exit.

Flashnul
http://shounen.ru/soft/flashnul/ - Russian Google Translate

D:/flashnul/flashnul.exe -p
 * Download the latest version at the time of writing this it was flashnul-1rc1.
 * Download and Extract the application from archive.
 * Click Start button > All Programs > Accessories >
 * Right Click on Command Prompt then Run as Administrator.
 * Run the flashnul with the probe argument:
 * Obviously change the path as appropriate depending on where you extracted the program.

"D:/flashnul 1rc1/"flashnul.exe -p Avaible physical drives: 0      size = 500107862016 (465 Gb) 1      size = 4040724480 (3853 Mb)
 * If your path has spaces within it eg. D:/flashnul 1rc1/... you will have to use Quotation marks:
 * Flashnul should output text similar to this:

Avaible logical disks: C:\ D:\ E:\ F:\ G:\

Press ENTER to exit.
 * Note the device number to the left of the usbdrive, In my case it is 1

D:/flashnul/flashnul.exe 1 -L D:/image_v1-3DISCA/image_v1-3.img
 * Use the load arguement to write the image:
 * flashnul.exe   -L  


 * Flashnul will give you a device summary and proceed caution, have a quick scan through the information to make sure you have selected the correct device, then type yes and press enter.
 * Close when finished


 * If you get a access denied error, try re-plugging the usb stick.
 * If you still get a access denied error, try substitute the device number with the drive letter followed by a colon. Eg:

D:/flashnul/flashnul.exe G: -L d:/image_v1-3DISCA/image_v1-3.img

(Pasted here from Talk:Main_Page, where it was getting hammered by spammers. Not sure why it was there or who wrote it, but user Bluemotion placed it there originally. )

dd
Find your USB key open /Applications/Terminal and type:

df -h

You should get something like: Filesystem     Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on /dev/disk0s2    74Gi   68Gi  6.4Gi    92%    / devfs         121Ki  121Ki    0Bi   100%    /dev fdesc         1.0Ki  1.0Ki    0Bi   100%    /dev map -hosts      0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /net map auto_home   0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%    /home /dev/disk1s1  3.7Gi  896Ki  3.7Gi     1%    /Volumes/USB2

You can see that a USB stick with the volume name USB2 is /dev/disk1s1

We want just the disk device name, and that is /dev/disk1

REMEMBER TO USE DISK UTILITY TO UNMOUNT (not EJECT) THE USB DRIVE !

dd if=joggler_unr_9.10_v1.3a.bin of=/dev/disk1 bs=10485760

Notes:

1) bs=10m (note lower case m) for OSX's standard dd

2) bs=10M (note upper case M) if you use fink or mac ports

3) bs=10485760 for both

And Wait ... probably 20-30 mins if you have a horrible usb hub :)

OSX will probably recognise the EFI partition after dd has finished writing it, so remember to eject the flash drive from finder before removing it.

dd
A similar method to dd on the mac is required, but on Linux disk devices look more like:

/dev/sdb1 3.7Gi 896Ki  3.7Gi     1%    /media/USB2

and now unmount it...

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

So we need /dev/sdb here (remember your devices will probably be different, so *please* engage brain! We can also specify units in the bs= section so we use 10M :-)

dd if=joggler_unr_9.10_v1.3a.bin of=/dev/sdb bs=10M

And Wait ... probably 20-30 mins if you have a horrible usb hub :)