Clonezilla Live on USB flash drive or USB hard drive

January 04 2010 21:04:11.

Some machine, e.g. Asus Eee PC or Acer Aspire One, comes without CD/DVD drive. In this case, USB flash drive or USB hard drive is the best way to boot Clonezilla live. To make your USB flash drive or hard drive bootable, first download Clonezilla live zip file. Then you can extract the files on your USB flash drive or USB hard drive and make it bootable on a MS Windows or GNU/Linux computer by the following steps (This method only works for the file system in USB flash drive or USB hard drive is FAT format. For other file system, you can try to use grub or other bootloader):

On MS windows
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WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
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WARNING!: ***DO NOT RUN*** makeboot.bat from your local hard drive! It should only be run from your USB flash drive or USB hard drive. Executing it incorrectly could cause your MS windows not to boot!!!
1. Download the HP-USB Format tool and format your flash drive using the Fat or Fat32 option. This program can be used to format USB devices that won't boot properly when formatted with MS windows format tool.
2. Extract all the contents of the clonezilla-live-usb.zip to your "flash drive." Keep the directory architecture, for example, file "COPYING" should be in the USB flash drive or USB hard drive's top directory (e.g. G:\COPYING).
3. Browse to your "flash drive" and enter the directory "utils", then sub-directory "win32", then click the file "makeboot.bat" to execute it. WARNING! Makeboot.bat must be run from your USB flash drive or USB hard drive. Executing it incorrectly could cause your MS windows not to boot.
4. Follow the on-screen instructions.
(PS: The above description was modified from: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/2007/01/02/all-in-one-usb-dsl. Thanks to PDLA from http://pendrivelinux.com)
On GNU/Linux
1. Prepare an USB flash drive or USB hard drive or external disk which has a partition using FAT (either FAT16, FAT32) file system. If the USB flash drive or USB hard drive does not have any partition, you can use disk tool (e.g. gparted, fdisk, cfdisk or sfdisk) to create a partition with size 200 MB or more, Here we assume your USB flash drive or USB hard drive is /dev/sdb (You have to comfirm your the device name, since it's _NOT_ always /dev/sdb) on your GNU/Linux, so the partition table is like:
```
# fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 12.8 GB, 12884901888 bytes
15 heads, 63 sectors/track, 26630 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 945 * 512 = 483840 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000c2aa7

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
   /dev/sdb1   *           1       26630    12582643+   b  W95 FAT32
```
  Then format the partition as FAT (e.g. "mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdb1" WARNING! Executing it incorrectly could cause your GNU/Linux not to boot. Confirm the command before you run it.).
```
# mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdb1
mkfs.vfat 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)
```
2. Insert your USB flash drive or USB hard drive into the USB port on your Linux machine and wait a few seconds. Next, run the command "dmesg" to query the device name of the USB flash drive or USB hard drive. Let's say, for example, that you find it is /dev/sdb1. In this example, we assume /dev/sdb1 has FAT filesystem, and it is automatically mounted in dir /media/usb/. If it's not automatically mounted, manually mount it by "mkdir -p /media/usb; mount /dev/sdb1 /media/usb/".
3. Unzip all the files, and copy them into your USB flash drive or USB hard drive (You can make it by the command like: "unzip clonezilla-live-1.0.10-8.zip -d /media/usb/"). Keep the directory architecture, for example, file "COPYING" should be in the USB flash drive or USB hard drive's top directory (e.g. /media/usb/COPYING).
4. To make your USB flash drive bootable, first change the working dir, e.g. "cd /media/usb/utils/linux", then run "bash makeboot.sh /dev/sdb1" (replace /dev/sdb1 as your USB flash drive device name), and follow the prompts to finish that. WARNING! Executing it with wrong device name could cause your GNU/Linux not to boot. Confirm the command before you run it. (There is a known problem if you run makeboot.sh on Debian Etch, since the program utils/linux/syslinux does not work on that. Make sure you run it on newer GNU/Linux, e.g. Debian Lenny, Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 9...).
5. If your USB flash drive or USB hard drive is not able to boot, check (1) Is there any partition in your flash drive ? It must contain 1 partition at least. (2) The partition must be marked as "bootable" in the partition table. (3) The partition must be on the cylinder boundary.