Backing up Multiboot Usb sticks

[eastof111]

Since I have many images on one usb stick, I usually backup the whole stick sector by sector using ImageUSB which does the job. It takes a loooong time but creates a safe and verified backup. When it's time to do a restore job, you have to use the same size stick or larger other wise it won't be restored.

When I am in a hurry to make a backup of a new image and all their plugins, settings etc. I use Telnet to the receiver with Putty and use TAR to backup the image from the usb stick to the hard drive. This usually takes about 30 seconds, but the restore process takes about 3 minutes.

Here's what works for me backing up an image called openatv-4_0-20140408 stored in my multiboot usb stick to my hard drive....

First I use Filezilla to create a directory called Multiboot_tar_backups on the hard drive, then to backup while in Telnet type:

tar -cf /media/hdd/Multiboot_tar_backups/openatv-4_0-20140408.tar /media/usb/MultiBootI/openatv-4_0-20140408

To restore from hard drive to usb stick type:
tar -xvf /media/hdd/Multiboot_tar_backups/openatv-4_0-20140408.tar -C /

Tar Commands:
TAR: Creating and Extracting .tar.gz and .tar files
tar -zxvf file.tar.gz : Extracts the file
tar -xvf file.tar : Extracts the file
tar -cf archive.tar contents/ : Takes everything from contents/ and puts it into archive.tar


Here's the url for ImageUSB:
[Only registered and activated users can see links]
which is a free Windows program.