Linux – Clone Flash Drive in Linux using DD

clonecopyddlinuxUbuntu

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

I want to create a clone a bootable USB stick.

lets say sda is 2GB
sdb is 32GB.

The above line will create a replica but the usable size will be 2GB. How can I use the remaining 30GB? (resize partition or modify the command so that it will maximize the usable space)

Best Answer

UPDATE: When you copy the drive instead of the partition, the partition-table gets overwritten and it might not be possible to make the partion bigger afterwards because the partition-table says that the disksize is only 2GB. On the other hand, if you copy only the data of the partition, the bootloader will break. You might want to have a different filesystem (e.g. ext3 instead of fat32), then dd won't work and you have to use cp.

ArchLinux wiki has an excellent tutorial for this.

Now you have to reinstall grub2 bootloader to your disks mbr (not the partition): tutorial

If you're still having problems, this might help: link

Related Solutions

How to clone a USB flash drive using dd

I recently had to clone a 32gb trancend thumbdrive onto another. My drive is a multiboot with additional software so I didn't want to just copy all files on the FS. DD was a clear choice, but I was on windows.

I had cygwin installed and did the following.

first I had to figure out what /dev/sdX device my f: volume was. To do so run this command in cygwin. (TIP: Make sure you start cygwin with admin privs.. *Right click on cygwin and "Run as Administrator")

cat /proc/partitions

which should output:

   8 0 3813383838 sda
   8 1       4031 sda3 C:\
   8 15  30588303 sdb 
   8 15  30588303 sdb1 E:\
   8 21  30530020 sdc
   8 22  30530020 sdc1 F:\

etc... Here you can clearly see for me to clone my F: drive to my E: drive I'd issue the following command.

dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdb bs=8M

My image was 32gb.. and I didn't want to just sit and wait with a blinking cursor.. I wanted to see progress so I installed "pv" in cygwin.

dd if=/dev/sdc | pv | dd of=/dev/sdb bs=8M

Hope this helps

Linux – Force PCIe SSD to be /dev/sdb on linux install

I wouldn't eff with udev rules for this. Modify your install scripts (preseed or kickstart) to ignore /dev/sda.

See: Consistent Install Disk Selection in RHEL Kickstart

Also, is there any way you can run a network install. USB installation of the OS is fraught because of SCSI enumeration issues.

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Related Solutions

How to clone a USB flash drive using dd

Linux – Force PCIe SSD to be /dev/sdb on linux install

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