I have my Mint USB drive set up pretty much the way I want it. Now I want to clone it to another USB stick as a backup. I'm using Acronis 2009. I've tried a direct cloning, and also creating an image and applying it to the new drive. Neither way is successful; with boot problems.

How can this be done with a high level of confidence that an exact clone will result?

Thanks for any ideas. I'm a newbie with linux, but a long time user of Windows, and do tech work as a part-time job.

Packrat1947

I think the problem you're running into is that the cloned drive is not being read by the system as bootable. You could try
(Assuming your usb drives are sdb and sdc), but I don't know if that will work any better than Acronis did.

Another thing you might try is getting the boot to work on the second drive before you copy the files over. You can do this by following the initial steps for creating a fresh usb drive install.

Hi, Thanks for the response. After sleeping on it, I realize that I did not use the sector-by-sector method. This leaves out such things as page file, hibernation, etc. on a Windows install.

So I'm guessing that Acronis didn't see some of the needed files. Possibly, if I used the bootable version of Acronis (linux based), I would have had better luck. I'll try again tonight. And I will try the dd method too.

Cheers,

Packrat1947

You may wanna try remastersys either the app or do it manaually

do you have Mint as a full install to usb
or as frugal livecd type install??

I would try out CloneZilla for that. I do not right now have my Ubuntu installed on usb stck now. But I am hoping CloneZilla has pretty much the power to do that. But the destination drive should at least be as much bigger as source if not more. Else CloneZilla is going to yell.

Just for the record, be very careful when using dd. It's a powerful, but dangerous command to use. It can destroy the data on a disk in seconds and it won't ask you for any confirmation before it does so. If you accidentally put in the wrong device, you could really hose something.

I know this from experience; I accidentally wiped a hard disk once when I was trying to blank a usb stick. I ended up losing most of my stored digital music collection.

And for those who post dd commands as part of your advice, please be sure to include a similar warning along with it. Thanks.

Just copy the files to a folder.

About the only thing you might need to restore is syslinux.

yeah jefro
thats why I was asking him if it was a frugal livecd like install
then just copy files

but if its a full install to usb, ala hd install
then clonezilla, dd, etc

right?
no?