Restoring an image to a smaller USB stick: safe way?

[Jacqueline_D45]

Hi Alex, hi everyone

I have been using USB Image Tool for a couple of years to keep backups of the sticks I use for my photo archive. Now one of the original 64 GB sticks died and the only replacement I have at hand is a 32 GB one. The image is 64 GB, but the actual data on it was around 20 GB.

Is there a supported way to restore such an image onto a smaller device, or do I have to mount the image somewhere, copy the files out and rebuild the stick by hand? I saw the option to create images of the partition only, but my backup was made in device mode, so I guess that ship has sailed.

Any hint on the safest workflow is appreciated. I would rather ask than lose the last copy of ten years of pictures.

Jacqueline

[Alex]

In case you don't have access to an USB drive of equal or bigger size, would suggest mounting the image with OSFMount (or any other mounting tool) and copy the file out of the image to the new drive. Truncating is no option if your partition fully covered the device and I don't know any tool that can resize partitions within the image (which I also would not do without additional copy of the image, if this is the only backup).

[Jacqueline_D45]

Thanks Alex, that was exactly the hint I needed.

I mounted the image read-only with OSFMount, copied everything over to the 32 GB stick and compared file counts and a few checksums afterwards, all fine. I also made a second copy of the image on an external disk before touching anything, as you suggested. For the next backups I will use volume mode so the image is not tied to the size of the device.

Jacqueline

[Alex]

Unfortunately, volume mode will not help much when restoring to a smaller device. In fact, it's the poorer choice and only available for backward compatibility. It will also not restore to a smaller device, because it's more or less the same image (on a single volume device) minus the boot record. Safe way is to restore to a bigger device and reszote the partition afterwards the the new bigger device size or do a file based backup instead of an image based.