Clone of a Bootable Flash Drive will not Boot

I'm attempting to make a clone of a bootable flash drive containing the Prime Expert Emergency Book kit using EraseUs Partition Master. The clone seems to seems the same contents as the original, but the drive is not bootable. Cockpit error?Possible, but earlier I used Aomei Partition Assistant Professional to make a bootable clone of a different bootable flash drive, and that clone was not bootable, either..

Am I missing something? Possibly bcdboot; See How to make cloned drive bootable?? Is there a better method? I'm using win10 with a legacy bios.

Jim

I have never used EaseUs Partiton Master. (EraseUs? Freudian slip?)

I've prepare bootable USB drives using Diskpart. For use with a legacy BIOS, the partition has to be marked as active. That step in not necessary for s system with UEFI.

Maybe you can mark the partition as active after using EaseUs. I don't know whether it would work.

You can "copy" a boot UFD with ImageUSB,

Tools for OSForensics - ImageUSB - Write an image to multiple USB Flash Drives

Anibor:
I used your download link, and ended up with Macorit Portable Partition Magic Partition Expert Editions List and Info. Is this the program I should get? I'm always careful to select the correct program, and this not one of the registry cleaner or driver update programs I would expect if I goofed.

I ran the program, and ended with an error and will email their support personnel for help
Jim

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Sorry: The link does appear correctly It should be
Partition Expert Editions List and Info

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I guess it is my day for errors. the name is https:::::://macrorit.com/products.html
Macrorit Free Disk Partition Software, Useful Gadgets Center

I tried it.
It clones the Prime Expert Bootable flash drive, but does not recognize a different bootable flash drive containing Terabyte Image for Linux. The Terabyte flash drive works fine when I use it, and is seen when I use the EraseUs Partition Manager clone function. I guess different groups at EraseUs worked on these two products, or at different times. I have one more EraseUs app to try - Todo Backup Home. EraseUs recommends using it in one of the results found when using an internet search. I did try different USB ports, but no joy.

Thanks for the tip. I have been retired too long and forgot different groups are almost like different companies in some situations and don't talk to each other.

Jim

Is the flash drive recognised in the Boot menu?

Jim8080 said:

I'm attempting to make a clone of a bootable flash drive containing the Prime Expert Emergency Book kit using EraseUs Partition Master. The clone seems to seems the same contents as the original, but the drive is not bootable.
Jim

I just replied to you on a different forum you're on regarding this topic. If you want to clone a bootable USB flash drive the tool you are looking for is Passmark's ImageUSB.

Tools for OSForensics - ImageUSB - Write an image to multiple USB Flash Drives

Like you, I have an old Dell BIOS PC and I have used several different types of bootable USB drives made with RUFUS and Grub4DOS. I have cloned many bootable hard drives over the years but never actually cloned bootable USB drives. I thought the process would be similar so I tried first Macrium Reflect Free but it wouldn't recognise the USB drives for cloning - apparently you need the paid version.

Yesterday I downloaded ImageUSB to my Dell Windows 10 1903 PC and put it through its paces. Source drive was a multi-boot 8GB USB with Acronis True Image, Acronis Disk Director, G-Parted, Clonezilla and Hiren's. Destination was an 8GB FAT32 drive with some movie files I had already seen.

I like ImageUSB for 4 reasons:

1) It's free as in beer
2) It's small (2.4 MB)
3) It's portable (No Installation required, just unzip and run) and is compatible with Windows Vista and higher.
4) Very straight-forward interface, just 4 steps.

The first step is to clone your bootable USB to an image file - select the source drive to clone, tick 'Create image from USB drive', choose the destination folder/filename and click 'Create'. That's it! You now have a copy of your bootable USB drive in an image file (.BIN) that you can safely store.

After it completes writing the image you put in your destination USB drive and repeat the process except you choose the USB drive to write to, select 'Write image to USB drive', choose the image file you just created and click 'Write'.

I tested this yesterday and it worked perfectly! I cloned my bootable USB created with Easy2Boot (which uses the Grub4DOS boot manager) and all the utilities booted normally. Perfect! The right tool for the right job!

I recommend you create an image post-haste and then write it to a different USB drive, then test the USB drive after writing the image. Please let us know if it works as I am not familiar with Prime Expert Emergency Book kit. If it does work please remember to keep the .BIN file you just created in a safe place so you can easily re-create your Boot kit in case you accidentally leave your USB drive at a friend's house (that happens more often than you think).

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Oops I just noticed that you did manage to clone your Prime Expert USB drive but not Terabyte for Linux. Linux is a tricky beast because of the file system and bootloader. I had Lubuntu 18 on the PC I now have Windows 10. I have used Acronis to backup and restore all my Windows PCs with no issues until I tried it with Lubuntu. In fact, I also tried Paragon, R-Drive, Aomei, and Macrium. Like Acronis, they all went through the motions of creating and restoring Lubuntu, no errors, everything is okie dokie! Except it's not. When I tried to boot Lubuntu, nothing. A backup isn't a backup until you successfully restore.

Unsurprisingly, the only imaging utility that I was able to use to backup AND successfully restore Lubuntu was Clonezilla since it is made for Linux. Supposedly newer versions of Acronis work with Linux, I haven't tried, that's a pet project for another time. I will download Slax, use RUFUS to make a USB bootable with it, create an image with ImageUSB, then reformat the USB drive, then write the image and see if it boots. I won't be able to get to that today though, I have too many other things to do.

Please do try the ImageUSB on your Terabyte for Linux USB drive and post your results, be good to know for Linux users.