USB Image Tool 1.27

While playing attound with the SCSI commands to get direct access to USB devices I found the reason for the physical device size detection problem. Because opening a device with restricted user rights fails when you flag read/write operations, I removed them during the detection process. Unfortunately they are needed to retrieve the physical disk size of a device. The volume based i/o operations are not concerned, because opening a volume handle for reading or writing does not require admin access.

With version 1.27 the detection process first tries to open the device with read/write access. If this fails, the device is opened without read/write access. In this situation the physical device size can not be determined, but volume operations work fine.

I also cleaned up the source code and did some testing with the SCSI command set. Using the information from the book, that I bought 2 months ago, and the spti sample from the Windows DDK, I was able to send an INQUIRY command directly to the device and retrieve a valid return from it. I still have to test the READ and WRITE commands, but for now it looks promising.

Comments

  • I have a USB key which boots into LINUX.

    I tried USBIT 1.27, and created a backup image. When I restored the image to another clean formatted (FAT32) USB key, it will not boot.

  • Thanks to all people, who gave feedback. I’ll answer some questions on future versions and current features:

    I’m working currently on a command line tool. I think it will be available with the next version (1.28).

    A translation was not planned. I will have to check what is necessary to make a localized interface.

    You can currently not create encrypted compressed images. The compression routines, that are used by USB Image Tool (XZip), don’t support zip-file compression.

    It is currently not possible to duplicate a bootable Linux USB stick, because Linux creates more than one volume on the USB device. This will (hopefully) possible with the device mode, that is planned for version 1.30. Please also check my earlier posts regarding this issue.

  • Hello Alex,
    After i reported your program on my group, one member if matched with what problem:
    when creating the image , do one error ,after that: he lost full data and now not possible open Usb or format Usb
    (No disc tells them when I go to format).
    Its not a problem for Windows or other devices because have a possibility read other usb…think : destroy Usb
    Alex …. that if you can do? you can make?
    Thank you for your interest ..

  • Hi,

    I didn’t completely got the problem, you mentioned. The device showed an error while making a backup? During backup only read operations are performed. So it shouldn’t affect the stick more than copying the files. After all, just the sectors on the stick are read. But if the drive isn’t detected for formatting at all, it sounds like a hardware failure. A time ago, one of my fathers USB sticks just stopped working, which was one of the reasons why I developed the program.

    To reanimate broken USB sticks I found this tool useful:
    HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
    http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

    To read data from images, if you don’t have the USB stick anymore, I can recommend:
    WinImage
    http://www.winimage.com

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