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.
Windows
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
- 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:
D:/flashnul/flashnul.exe -p
- Obviously change the path as appropriate depending on where you extracted the program.
- If your path has spaces within it eg. D:/flashnul 1rc1/... you will have to use Quotation marks:
"D:/flashnul 1rc1/"flashnul.exe -p
- Flashnul should output text similar to this:
Avaible physical drives: 0 size = 500107862016 (465 Gb) 1 size = 4040724480 (3853 Mb) 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
- Use the load arguement to write the image:
D:/flashnul/flashnul.exe 1 -L D:/image_v1-3DISCA/image_v1-3.img
- <Path to flashnul directory>flashnul.exe <device number> -L <img file path>
- 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. [1] )
Mac
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]
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.
Linux
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 :)