make 1 to 1 copy of bootable USB drive including MBR / Boot loader

C

compslckr

[H]F Junkie
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Jun 5, 2002
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Ok, so for work I build an 8gb USB drive that includes the following 3 partitions
1) Our windows image
2) Hiren boot cd
3) Slax Linux

when I boot from the drive I get a simple boot loader where I can choose any of the 3 options and boot them from the usb drive. pretty nifty, I know.

A few of my co-workers want the same thing, and it would be alot easier to have a way to just clone my drive to theirs.

I have windows, mac and linux PC's available, so any opinions / suggestions are welcome.

Things I have looked into
Superduper! mac. only lets you go from hard drive to another hard drive, or usb drive

Make an Image with disk utility. image is not bootable, but does keep partitions in tact, so I could always use that, and reinstall the boot loader / config

Just copying files over manually after creating partitions. this works, but I still have to install the boot loader and do the config on the drive.


Basically I want automatic, plug both drives in, choose source, choose destination, hit go, wait and have a 1 for 1 copy of my drive.

Any help?
Thanks,
Zac
 
Can the dd command in Linux do this? I'm not well versed, but I think it can. Maybe someone can write you a fairly simple script to pull it off. Ask a mod to move this to the general storage area and it will get a lot more traffic.
 
Ghost wont image the drive and correctly place it on another drive?

I image 4gb Cruzer sticks from my image with BartPE and ghost, I did find/have problems putting the 4gb model image onto a smaller one, 2gb (image is only 250mb), probably a FAT/FAT32 partition thingy
 
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