Create ISO from USB drive

[Pulsewave]

Hi World.
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I have create a USB boot disk of Ubuntu 8.10 on a 4 GB flash disk.
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I have customized the install.
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Now i would like to create a ISO file of the USB disk.
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Anyone have any ideas if it is possible to create an ISO file of USB flash disk or any other method to create a backup of my USB flash that can be restored to any other flash drives.
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Thanks In Advance

[HalPomeranz]

You can use dd for this. In the example commands below, I'm assuming your USB device is recognized by the system as /dev/sdb. You should make sure that this is the case before executing any of the commands below, because if you get the device name wrong, the second command below will end up overwriting the wrong device and destroying your data.

To make an image from your existing USB setup and write it to the file usb-image.iso:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=usb-image.iso

You could now remove your current USB device and connect an empty device, which the system should again see as /dev/sdb. To copy the usb-image.iso file onto the new device:

sudo dd if=usb-image.iso of=/dev/sdb

Again it is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that you make sure you're using the correct device name before executing the command above. Otherwise you run the risk of clobbering the data on some other disk device that may be critical to your system.

[Pulsewave]

Thanks Hal, ill try that.

[cpeee]

Sorry for responding to an old thread. I'm looking to do the same thing. Do u dd the entire device or the partition of the device? Reason why I asked is that, I may need to re-create the usb-drive to a totally different (in size) one. Example, my original USB is 2GB, I would like the .iso to be replicated/created on a 4GB drive, would dd /dev/sdb have the same effect as dd /dev/sdb1? assume I only have 1 partition on the original drive. Thanks!

[colau]

You can use dd for this. In the example commands below, I'm assuming your USB device is recognized by the system as /dev/sdb. You should make sure that this is the case before executing any of the commands below, because if you get the device name wrong, the second command below will end up overwriting the wrong device and destroying your data.

To make an image from your existing USB setup and write it to the file usb-image.iso:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=usb-image.iso

You could now remove your current USB device and connect an empty device, which the system should again see as /dev/sdb. To copy the usb-image.iso file onto the new device:

sudo dd if=usb-image.iso of=/dev/sdb

Again it is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that you make sure you're using the correct device name before executing the command above. Otherwise you run the risk of clobbering the data on some other disk device that may be critical to your system.

Nice tip and thanks for your signature link as well.

[Brandon Williams]

Sorry for responding to an old thread. I'm looking to do the same thing. Do u dd the entire device or the partition of the device? Reason why I asked is that, I may need to re-create the usb-drive to a totally different (in size) one. Example, my original USB is 2GB, I would like the .iso to be replicated/created on a 4GB drive, would dd /dev/sdb have the same effect as dd /dev/sdb1? assume I only have 1 partition on the original drive. Thanks!

If you use if=/dev/sdb1 instead of if=/dev/sdb, then yes, you will create an image of the partition. If you have a larger USB drive, you can simply create a correctly sized partition on that drive and then copy your image to just that partition using the partition's device name as the of= parameter, as in of=/dev/sdb1.

[russet_wolf]

Sorry for replying to this old post, but is there any way to save the ISO to the hard drive instead of burning it to a new device right away?

[wilee-nilee]

Sorry for replying to this old post, but is there any way to save the ISO to the hard drive instead of burning it to a new device right away?

You can probably drag the whole thing into file, but whether it is usable again as it is on the USB device is probably in question here. I suspect that is why there are special programs to burn it. But it might be a good reference tool in case you want to access the added software for documenting the installs.

You also should be aware of the daily builds of Ubuntu, these are the updated version up to the date of the fixes of software issues,and are formatted to a iso for a CD burn.

[Siljrath]

i'm fairly familiar with dd, i'm looking for a way to achieve this without copying all the empty space too.

i am also familiar with remastersys, but this is not an option this time for me.

what other methods are there?

someone suggested there's an iso-builder, i tried searching for such a thing several ways, but this thread was best i came up with.

[satir.satir]

to view progres i use tee

sudo dd if=/dev/sdf of=usb-image.iso | tee usb-image.txt