Etcher: flash images to SD and USB

[Batu69]

Etcher is a new cross-platform open source program to burn operating system images to SD cards and USB drives safely and securely.

My Surface Pro 4 ships without optical drive, and so do quite a few modern laptops and desktop PCs. It seems that optical discs are on their way to a niche existence; but this may come with a couple of issues.

 

For instance, it is no longer possible to burn an ISO image of Linux Mint, Windows, or other operating systems to disc to start the installation process. Since you cannot insert discs anymore, you need to rely on SD cards or USB Flash drives for that.

Companies may provide you with tools to copy ISO images to removable drives. You may also use third-party tools like XBOOT or YUMI to burn ISO images to USB Flash drives or SD cards.

Etcher

 

Etcher is offered as a beta release for Windows, Linux and Mac devices currently. The download is quite large -- 81 Megabyte on Windows -- but the functionality that it provides may be worth it.

 

Note: The program attempts to connect to Internet servers regularly. These appear to be maintained by resin.io, the company that created the project. It is unclear why those connections are made. Could be an automatic check for updates.

 

The interface is streamlined for ease of use. The whole process consists of three steps that are outlined in the interface on start.

It starts with the selection of an image. The application supports various image formats including iso, img, dsk as well as gz, bzz and xz.

 

Etcher tries to identify the correct drive automatically after you have selected an ISO image. The program jumps to the third and final step -- flashing -- automatically in that case.

You may change the drive, which is useful if more than one removable drive is connected to the PC, or if the automatic identification of the drive failed.

Etcher displays progress information in percent, the current write speed, and the estimated time of completion.

Validation

 

The application validates the copying of data after the copy process to make sure everything copied correctly. This is an important step as it ensures that you won't run into corruption issues when running the operating system or installing it on a device.

 

The complete process takes a bit longer because of the validation but it is worth it and should not take longer than a couple of minutes tops. You may disable validation in the settings if you don't require it.

 

Also, you may display the reporting of errors, and that the drive is unmounted when the operating completes successfully.

The final page displays whether the operation completed successfully.

 

 

You find the CRC32 checksum on the page, and get options to flash the same image or a new image.

 

Etcher

 

Article source

[jabrwky]

Portable version?

[Karlston]

Cross-platform makes this very useful, even though it's only a beta at this stage.

 

For Windows though, I've used Rufus many, many times with success. There's also a portable version of Rufus. Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way

[steven36]

8 hours ago, Karlston said:

Cross-platform makes this very useful, even though it's only a beta at this stage.

 

For Windows though, I've used Rufus many, many times with success. There's also a portable version of Rufus. Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way

I never done this i still use DVDs for O/S,  Im old school  , I don't have any flash drives only I have 2 portable 1TB  hard drives  and a 5 TB external . The only  thing I done on my  USB HHDs  is I have one portable HHD  I have put  Linux Mint and Manjaro  on and windows 10  is on my main HHD ,  I'm triple booting O/S now.. The  other 6 TB i use for storage.  A DVD burner and player is still nice to have you can buy a portable one that you can plug in even if you don't have one. 

[straycat19]

14 hours ago, Batu69 said:

You find the CRC32 checksum on the page, and get options to flash the same image or a new image

 

This is a handy check to verify the image.  I like that it is designed for flash drives since I remove all the DVD drives from my laptops and install a caddy with a second HDD or SSD.  I don't even put DVDs in my new desktops.  I have a huge collection of fast flash drives, windows to go drives, external pocket size hard drives, and 114TB NAS.  Some of my newer desktops are diskless, plug in the external drive or flash drive and boot from it.  For my purposes this is perfect and Windows To Go works on anything I plug it into so I always have whichever version of Windows To Go I want with the software I want installed on it and have different configurations for different uses.  It is just more practical and convenient.

14 hours ago, Batu69 said:

The program attempts to connect to Internet servers regularly.

 

This could be a downside but if it can be blocked without any adverse affect then it isn't a big deal.

 

This program seems ideal for making a quick ISO image and would be more convenient if it can be made portable.  It should run from a Windows To Go drive just fine, and if you mount the internal HDD/SSD, then an image should be able to be made of it rather easily using an external HDD without installing the software on the system itself.  

 

It appears that it only creates an ISO of the data portion of the drive which would make it smaller and faster than using a forensic imager, such as FTK imager, even with the required time to do a hash check.

 

[steven36]

2 hours ago, straycat19 said:

Some of my newer desktops are diskless, plug in the external drive or flash drive and boot from it.  For my purposes this is perfect and Windows To Go works on anything I plug it into so I always have whichever version of Windows To Go I want with the software I want installed on it and have different configurations for different uses.  It is just more practical and convenient.

Anyone that would do this care more about installing  O/S on multiple PCs  than enjoying them . What good is having 50 pcs unless you are a  company or have 50 kids there useless ?  4 is enough for me . After all  the most you ever need going is 2 . one too do task on and one to be task free for entertainment and if you  build one powerful enough 1 would be all you needed.  Sounds like a waste of money too me the great thing about a DVD is even if you're HHD died you can pop one in with a Linux Distro and still access the internet . Ether you're good at telling tall tails  or you just like too waste money on things that could spend on something better ? If what you say is true what you do does not have no baring in the real world were  most home users have not bought a PC since 2013.

[TheMountain]

Certain avatars always warn me to prepare for a bitching & moaning onslaught. 

[steven36]

1 hour ago, TheMountain said:

Certain avatars always warn me to prepare for a bitching & moaning onslaught. 

I think this is good software but  its sort like a DVD  . Its not going to be used very often unless you ran a computer shop. I have 4 PCs  I mostly only switch one off and use the other to do updates about once a month I mostly only use one at a time . So Im no better off than back when I only had one,  it just adds extra work on me that if i didn't have 4pcs  i could be watching a movie or doing something entertaining  . People waste too much time looking for software , patching O/S  etc already . Installing O/S just adds more work load  I don't even install O/S unless  I want to try something new if you use Windows you don't  have very many choices no how .

 

I have 3 O/S on this one PC I can reboot and change O/S with out truing one of my others on even . Normal people never install and O/S  if it breaks they let someone else fix it  or buy a new one . I have a PC that has the same copy of Windows 7 on it since 2011 when i upgraded it  from Vista .  If  I just used windows on all my PCs  i would never need to install a O/S  unless something missed up that could be years or never mess up at all.  If you don't install stuff you don't use and don't mess with snake oil products and stay away from malware a windows install can last you many years and this is the case for most normal users . If you need to  install the same version of windows over and over you're doing something  badly wrong.  

 

Sidenote  when I visit this site I always to be prepared for ban members like you and trolls who go off topic and with personal attacks because they really have nothing too add to the topic .  It looks like after being banned 2 times this year you would stop pushing you're luck . Before you got banned i never had a problem  with you but since you been back all you done was  insult me ?

[TheMountain]