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I have several bootable USB flash drives lying around - some of them have Linux distros on them and others are Windows recovery drives. The thing is that the number of flash drives for these purposes is getting out of hand. Especially with Windows, I like to have several versions of recovery disks even. So I wonder: is it possible to export the contents of these USB flash drives to (bootable) ISO files? And what steps do I have to take to do the reverse: i.e. import the ISO image and turn the drive into a bootable one?

Does anyone have any experience with this?

sandokanfirst
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  • Do you have any persistency on these drives or just read-only ISOs? – gronostaj Jan 26 '23 at 18:14
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    I am not sure if I fully understand your question. The flash drives basically contain images of Linux or Windows (in the latter case created by the Create Recovery Drive option). I'd like to create ISOs from the flash drive and write those to a large HDD so that when and if the time comes I can prepare the USB drive with the relevant ISO. – sandokanfirst Jan 26 '23 at 18:59
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    In the past I used ImgBurn to create ISO files from bootable cd/dvd disks. I can see that ImgBurn can be used to create ISO files from bootable usb sticks [too](https://timothy-quinn.com/how-to-convert-a-bootable-usb-to-an-iso-file/). – Damir Jan 26 '23 at 19:37
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    In case of Linux you've created these from ISOs, is that correct? Were they set up to persist your changes back onto the drive or do they discard everything each time? – gronostaj Jan 26 '23 at 19:42
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    I found [this](https://www.osforensics.com/tools/write-usb-images.html). It looks fine to me, didn't try it though... For Linux isos - you can get them online (probably for every version you want). – Damir Jan 26 '23 at 19:51
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    "*And what steps do I have to take to do the reverse ...*" -- Make the ISO image a "hybrid" image; see https://superuser.com/questions/410305/what-is-the-difference-between-the-usb-booting-mechanism-and-optical-disk-bootin/410493#410493 "*I'd like to create ISOs from the flash drive and ... if the time comes I can prepare the USB drive with the relevant ISO.*" -- Since you're not going to write the ISO image to an optical disc, why bother with the conversion to a different filesystem? Just make an image of the USB flash drive (and then compress it). – sawdust Jan 26 '23 at 21:39
  • Thanks, all, for your comments. – sandokanfirst Jan 27 '23 at 09:25
  • @gronostaj With the Linux ISOs they are mostly ISOs where changes are discarded (and which I could download again, as others have pointed out.) However, the (Windows) recovery drives contain updated versions, and I like keeping several of them. By the way, having updated and configured ISOs for the Linux distros would be a bonus as it always takes some time to configure them to my liking at a re-install. – sandokanfirst Jan 27 '23 at 09:31
  • If so, don't bother with reading these Linux distros off of flash drives, just download them. Multi-booting multiple Linux ISOs is a solved problem. Use Ventoy for the ones where you don't need persistence. Where you need it, YUMI should work, although it's less convenient and compatibility isn't as good. – gronostaj Jan 27 '23 at 11:37
  • It's really a case-by-case thing. If the stick was written with a (hybrid) ISO that itself was "El-Torito bootable", then you can dump from the drive on block-level an get back the same ISO that will boot when burned to an optical disc. (The only issue might be you need to know where the ISO ends. Probably don't need to be exact though, just not shorter.) However, if the drive was prepared purely for non-optical boot (often the case for Windows ones), you'll need to make sure your ISO/UDF preparing program will make a ET bootable one for you, and it will be making the image with the *files*. – Tom Yan Jan 29 '23 at 04:42
  • Probably not, given that USB disks usually do not contain an ISO 9660 file system. – user3840170 Jan 29 '23 at 19:08

1 Answers1

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  1. You can make an exact image of a USB drive with PassMark's ImageUSB, which an be saved on disk as ISO, BIN or other format. Just use the same tool on the image on disk to transfer back to USB.

ImageUSB

  1. As you state, it's very useful to have a variety of rescue media, such as Live Ubuntu, Hiren's Boot CD, Macrium Reflect rescue media and Ultimate Boot CD, and the clutter of USB flash drives annoying, I've started to put the media on small, inexpensive µSD cards, and keep a few µSD readers handy. As an example, a 5-pack of 32-GB cards can be found for US$15 and a 5-pack of readers for US$6. The cards are too tiny to label fully, but I number them in white correction pen and label the storage box.

µSD Card Storage

DrMoishe Pippik
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