Comments on: USB Image Tool support forum

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:21:46 +0000

@Steve Harris: Please take a look at the FAQ.

By: Steve Harris

Steve Harris — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 07:35:24 +0000

If I backup a 2gb flash drive and then try to restore the img file to a 4gb flash drive – I lose 2gb..

Is there any way I can restore the 2gb backup file to the 4gb flash drive and retain the extra 2gb capacity as at the moment the restore makes the 4gb into 2gb? and I lose 2gb

Steve

By: Raymond

Raymond — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 18:28:23 +0000

Thank you for the rapid response. I modified your strategy slightly and would your opinion:

* backup the 8GB partition
* resize (GParted) the 8GB partition to a 1GB partition
* create image of the 1GB parition with USB Image Tool
* restore new 1GB image to 4GB tool
* resize the the 1GB parition to 4GB

I am using Gparted from a Sysemrescue CD boot CD inside a Virtual Machine to perform the tasks above. My VM supports USB devices.

I would suppose that I could use a 0.5 GB partition, because the data shows 0.429 GB used, however, I’m not gonning to push my luck.

Again, thank you for your help & support. You now have a friend in Florida!

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 10:05:55 +0000

@Raymond:

Hello,

You have to use the device mode to make an 1:1 copy of your original device. Before making the image you have to resize the ext3 partition on your AppleTV patchstick, to make sure that physical drive information and partition info are matching. You can use the GParted Live CD (just google it) to reduce the size of the ext3 partition on your 8GB patchstick. Burn it to a CD, boot from that CD and resite the partition. After that, you can create in image in device mode. When restoring this image (also in device mode), you have to activate the option “truncate oversize images”.

By: Raymond

Raymond — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 02:22:07 +0000

Hi Alex, you have done a wonderful job with this tool. I have used it to create the AppleTV patchstick.

I realize that I am probably not the first to ask these questions, however, I could not find the answers (FAQ \ forum?). If this is case, a link to the information is greatly appreciated.

BACKGROUND
==========
I created an ext3 partition on an 8GB Flash drive. The OS reports that I am using 429MBs of the 7841MBs:

root@athomehost:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs 5.9M 5.9M 0 100% /
/dev/root 5.9M 5.9M 0 100% /
/dev/discs/disc0/part1
7.4G 429M 6.6G 6% /opt
/dev/sda1 7.4G 429M 6.6G 6% /mmc
root@athomehost:~# cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name

31 0 256 mtdblock0
31 1 32384 mtdblock1
31 2 6078 mtdblock2
31 3 128 mtdblock3
31 4 24960 mtdblock4
8 0 7841279 sda
8 1 7839688 sda1

GOAL
====
I do not need to use such a large (8GB) USB drive, so I’d like to migrate everything to a smaller 4GB USB drive. This drive is not bootable.

QUESTIONS
=========
Is USB Image tool right for this job?

What I have done: I imaged the 8GB drive with USB Image tool. My only option was to select ‘device mode’ because selecting volume mode would hide the 8GB drive. Naturally, USB Image tool would not apply the 8GB image to the 4GB drive.

Given that only using 429MB is used, is there an option \ method to image the drive such a way that I can apply the image to a USB drive of at least 1000GB?

Thank you for helping out a newbie.

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:40:37 +0000

@Brian Ming: If you used a smaller image on a larger device, you have to write the empty bootsector from the download page to it. After that, you should be able the repartition and reformat it with the original size.

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:38:58 +0000

@db: As far as I know, there is no such tool that can mount such images directly to windows. Maybe you can convert it to a virtual hard drive and use it in VMWare/VirtualBox/VirtualPC, but I don’t know if it’s possible.

By: Brian Ming

Brian Ming — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:07:45 +0000

Just a quick question. If a user has a bootable USB stick and wants it to revert to a normal use memory stick does he just go into My Computer and delete all the files it lists for that drive. Will this give him all the memory back.

By: Brian Ming

Brian Ming — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:54:16 +0000

I made sure I did as you suggested and this time I had success – thank you

By: db

db — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:52:23 +0000

Hi,

how do I mount the usb images made with USB Image Tool to a windows system drive letter?