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What is the best utility for completely cloning a flash drive using either Win7 or Lion? My intent here is to include complete partition table and boot records... so bit for bit, regardless of permissions (on the flash drive) or encryption.

Prefer open source and/or freeware...

Thanks!

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2 Answers

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Use something like dd_rescue to clone the drive, it is perfect for what you are looking to do because it truly makes a bit for bit copy and not just an image. Just hook up the drive and the one you want to clone to, then boot into a Linux Live CD (Knoppix is great) and clone the drive with dd_rescue.

Just make sure to be VERY careful when using this tool, if not used properly it can destroy your data.

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Or dd could be used (rescue is designed more for recovery than general imaging). It comes with OS X, by the way. – Bob May 25 '12 at 16:18
I ended up using dd and it worked perfectly. I had tried it before but it seemed to take forever so I stopped it... turns out I just needed some patience... Thanks guys! – Vic May 27 '12 at 21:34
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The best (in my opinion) open source cloning software is Clonezilla.

http://clonezilla.org/

However, if you get the coin to do so, the best disk cloning software out there is Acronis TrueImage.

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+1 for Clonezilla. I already need to clone 50 flash drives(including boot records) and Clonezilla did it gratefully. – Diogo May 25 '12 at 16:00

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