How can I clone my USB thumb drive?
I have portable app installed with quite a few applications and I would like to replace my old USB 2.0 stick
with a new usb 3.0 one. However I don't want to re-install everything from the beginning and I also want to keep the setting of my applications.
Many thanks
Nic
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Clone drive
May 4, 2016 - 9:00pm
#1
Clone drive
FastCopy Portable https://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/fastcopy-portable
Assuming two USB ports, a short description. Old drive goes in one (Source) and new drive in the other (Destination). Select the source 'Drive', the destination 'Drive', method 'Copy', select 'Verify', click 'Execute' and finally wait till says 'Finished'.
Do you mean bit by bit raw image of the drive or do you want to back up its contents and then move it to a larger drive? If you want a raw disk image I'd recommend a linux distro and the dd command to clone the flash drive, or the forensic utility called ImageUSB by passmark. Now if you want to just backup content, and its settings from the drive and then install it all to a larger drive i'd suggest using the portableapps built-in backup utility. Go to backup>backup files and select what it is you want to backup from the drive, save the backup for future reference.
When transferring your data back over to the new drive, you should install the portableapps launcher to the new flash drive, and then launch the platform and restore all of your content back to the newer drive, by selecting backup>restore from backup.
I do such things often and use just the copy - paste function of windows
(I do this number of times every week)
BTW: the bit by bit image produced by those known linux distros has no special functionality on flash drives, as the file system and the whole sectors etc are just virtual so our windows does understand it. The bit by bit pattern of the real storage is not accessible from outside via the USB connection for normal PC operating systems.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland