USBImager

USBImager is a really really simple GUI application that writes compressed disk images to USB drives and creates backups. Available platforms: Windows, MacOSX and Linux. Its interface is as simple as it gets, totally bloat-free.

Platform	Frontend	Description
Windows	GDI GDI wo	native interface simplified, write-only interface
MacOS	Cocoa Intel Cocoa ARM	for older Mac models for newer Mac models (provided by @tshup)
Ubuntu LTS	GTK+ GTK+ wo	same as the Linux PC GTK version with udisks2 support, but in .deb format simplified, write-only interface
RaspiOS	GTK+ GTK+ wo	same as the Raspberry Pi GTK version with udisks2 support, but in .deb format simplified, write-only interface
Arch/Manjaro	GTK+ GTK+ X11	same as the Linux PC GTK version with udisks2 support, but in an AUR package generated from the binaries minimal X11 version
Linux PC	X11 X11 wo X11 uf X11 wo uf GTK+	recommended simplified, write-only interface with embedded Unifont, +512K simplified interface with embedded Unifont, +512K compatibility (requires udisks2)
Raspberry Pi	X11 X11 wo X11 uf X11 wo uf X11 X11 wo X11 uf X11 wo uf	AArch32 (armv7l), normal interface AArch32, simplified, write-only interface AArch32, normal, with embedded Unifont, +512K AArch32, simplified, with embedded Unifont, +512K AArch64 (arm64), normal interface AArch64, simplified, write-only interface AArch64, normal, with embedded Unifont, +512K AArch64, simplified, with embedded Unifont, +512K

NOTE: I have to say a few words on this, because this question is keep popping up constantly: Why not just use dd? My answers:

USBImager's main audiance is the non-expert average user, who is (sadly) afraid of the command line. But even if they weren't:
dd isn't cross-platform (for example not on Windows, so disk-writing requires an application anyway).
dd can't use compressed image files on-the-fly (yes, yes, I can use pipes, but average Joe can't).
dd can't verify if the write was successful.
dd doesn't guarantee that the data is actually physically written to the storage (not unless you use some additional options).
dd doesn't stop you from making a terrible mistake (which is perfect for an expert, but not so much for a needs-to-image-once-in-a-century folks).
no, USBImager isn't a frontend to dd, it is a fully-featured native application on all platforms.
no, USBImager doesn't need any DLLs, all the file format parsers and uncompressors are already included.

NOTE: forever returning problem: the GTK version works, but the X11 version only shows boxes (or nothing) instead of text. This isn't an USBImager issue, rather X11 fontconfig problem. Solutions:

Install your distro's xfonts-unifont package to fix (FYI, any other X11 font containing UNICODE glyphs would do).
If there were no such package in your distro, then download unifont-*.pcf.gz from here, copy it under /usr/share/fonts/misc (or into any other directory listed by fc-list) and execute the fc-cache -vf command to update the font cache. After this USBImager should be able to find and use this font on its own.
Download one of the uf versions of USBImager. These are bigger binaries because they include Unifont, but in return they don't need X11 fontconfig (nor any X11 font) at all.

Screenshots

Installation

download one of the usbimager_*.zip archives from the repo for your desktop (less than 192 Kilobytes each)
extract to: C:\Program Files (Windows), /Applications (MacOSX) or /usr (Linux)
Enjoy!

You can use the executable in the archive as-is, the other files only provide integration with your desktop (icons and such). It will autodetect your operating system's configured language, and if dictionary found, it will greet you in your language.

On Ubuntu LTS and Raspbian machines you can also download the deb version, which then can be installed by the

sudo dpkg -i usbimager_*.deb

command.

Support the Development by Donation

If you like it or find it useful, your donation of any amount will be very much appreciated:

BTC 3EsdxN1ZsX5JkLgk3uR4ybHLDX5i687dkx

Features

Open Source and MIT licensed
Portable executable, no installation needed, just extract the archives
Small. Really small, few kilobytes only, yet has no dependencies
No privacy concerns nor advertisements like with etch*r, fully GDPR compatible
Minimalist, multilingual, native interface on all platforms
Tries to be bullet-proof and avoids overwriting of the system disk
Makes synchronized writes, that is, all data is on disk when the progressbar reaches 100%
Can verify writing by comparing the disk to the image
Can read raw disk images: .img, .bin, .raw, .iso, .dd, etc.
Can read compressed images on-the-fly: .gz, .bz2, .xz, .zst
Can read archives on-the-fly: .zip (PKZIP and ZIP64), .zzz (ZZZip), .tar, .cpio, .pax (*)
Can create backups in raw and ZStandard compressed format
Can send images to microcontrollers over serial line
Available in 18 languages

(* - for archives with multiple files, the first file in the archive is used as input)

Limitations

With xz compression dictionaries bigger than 1 Gigabytes not supported (the default xz dictionary size is 64 Mb).

Comparison

Description	balenaEtcher	WIN32 Disk Imager	USBImager
Multiplatform	✔	✗	✔
Minimum Windows	Win 7	Win XP	Win XP
Minimum MacOSX (1)	10.15	✗	10.10
Available on Raspbian	✗	✗	✔
Program size (2)	130 Mb	✗	300 Kb
Dependencies	lots, ~300 Mb	Qt, ~8 Mb	✗ none
Spyware-free and ad-free	✗	✔	✔
Native interface	✗	✗	✔
Guarantee on data writes (3)	✗	✗	✔
Verify data written	✔	✗	✔
Compressed images	✔	✗	✔
Raw write time (4)	23:16	23:28	24:05
Compressed write time (4)	01:12:51	✗	30:47

(1) - for Intel: 10.14, but it was reported that you can compile the source under 10.13 too without problems. Furthermore, Tarnyko also successfully tested it under 10.10. For ARM: the minimum version is 11.0. The USBImager binaries are provided by a contributor, @tshup, many many thanks!

(2) - the portable executable's size on Windows platform. I couldn't download an official pre-compiled version of WIN32 Disk Imager, just the source. The uf versions of USBImager are bigger, ~800K, because they include Unifont.

(3) - USBImager uses only non-buffered IO operations to make sure data is physically written to disk

(4) - measurements performed by @CaptainMidnight on Windows 10 Pro using a SanDisk Ulta 32GB A1 device. Raw image file size was 31,166,976 Kb, the bzip2 compressed image size was 1,887,044 Kb. WIN32 Disk Imager was unable to uncompress the image file, therefore the resulting card was unbootable.

Usage

If you can't write to the target device (you get "permission denied" errors), then:

Windows: right-click on usbimager.exe and use the "Run as Administrator" option.

MacOSX: because the "Full Disk Access" doesn't work and Apple refuses to fix it for years now, the app runs sudo /Applications/USBImager.app/Contents/MacOS/usbimager by itself. This always works from Terminal. If it does not start by any chance, then you have to set the SUDO_ASKPASS environment variable (newer MacOS sets this by default, but under Catalina and before you might need to set it manually). If you get "USBImager.app" is damaged and can't be opened. error message, then that's because Finder adds a quarantine tag by default. To remove, in a Terminal run /usr/bin/xattr -crv /Applications/USBImager.app and everything will be fine.

Linux: this should not be an issue as USBImager comes with setgid bit set. If not, then you can use sudo chgrp disk usbimager && sudo chmod g+s usbimager to set it. Alternatively add your user to the "disk" group (see "ls -la /dev|grep -e ^b" to find out which group your OS is using). Should be no need for sudo /usr/bin/usbimager, just make sure your user has write access to the devices, that's the Principle of Least Privilege.

If your drive does not show up in the list, then it might be too big or might be the system disk. The '-m' flag can be used to set what is considered too big. For example '-m1024' allows you to select all disks that are smaller than 1 Terrabyte. The '-a' flag (all) turns off filtering, and allows you to select any device; warning, even the system disks!

Interface

row: image file
row: operations, write and read respectively
row: device selection
row: options: verify write, compress output and buffer size respectively

For X11 I made everything from scratch to avoid dependencies. Clicking and keyboard navigation works as expected: Tab and Shift + Tab switches the input field, Enter selects. Plus in Open File dialog Left / BackSpace goes one directory up, Right / Enter goes one directory down (or selects the item if it's not a directory). You can use Shift + Up / Down to change the sorting order. "Recently Used" files also supported (through freedesktop.org's Desktop Bookmarks Standard).

Writing Image File to Device

select an image by clicking on "..." in the 1st row
select a device by clicking on the 3rd row
click on the first button (Write) in the 2nd row

With this operation, the file format and the compression is autodetected. Please note that the remaining time is just an estimate. Some compressed files do not store the uncompressed file size, for those you will see "x MiB so far" in the status bar. Their remaining time will be less accurate, just an approximation of an estimation using the ratio of compressed position / compressed size (in short it is truly nothing more than a rough estimate).

If "Verify" is clicked, then each block is read back from the disk and compared to the original image.

The last option, the selection box selects the buffer size to use. The image file will be processed in this big chunks. Keep in mind that the actual memory requirement is threefold, because there's one buffer for the compressed data, one for the uncompressed data, and one for the data read back for verification.

Creating Backup Image File from Device

select a device by clicking on the 3rd row
click on the second button (Read) in the 2nd row
the image file will be saved on your Desktop, its name is in the 1st row

The generated image file is in the form "usbimager-(date)T(time).dd", generated with the current timestamp. If "Compress" option is checked, then a ".zst" suffix will be added, and the image will be compressed using ZStandard. It has much better compression ratio than gzip deflate. For raw images the remaining time is accurate, however for compression it highly depends on the time taken by the compression algorithm, which in turn depends on the data, so remaining time is just an estimate.

Note: on Linux, if ~/Desktop is not found, then ~/Downloads will be used. If even that doesn't exists, then the image file will be saved in your home directory. On other platforms the Desktop always exists, but if by any chance not, then the current directory is used. On all platforms, if an existing directory is specified on the command line, that is used to save backups.

Advanced Functionalities

Flag	Description
-v/-vv	Be verbose
-Lxx	Force language
-1..9	Set buffer size
-m(gb)	Maximum disk size
-a	List all devices
-f	Force write
-s[baud]/-S[baud]	Use serial devices
-F(xlfd)	Specify X11 font
--version	Prints version
(dir)	First non-flag is the backup directory

For Windows users: right-click on usbimager.exe, and select "Create Shortcut". Then right-click on the newly created ".lnk" file, and select "Properties". On the "Shortcut" tab, in the "Target" field, you can add the flags. On the "Security" tab, you can also set to run USBImager as Administrator if you have problems accessing the raw disk devices.

Flags can be given separately (like "usbimager -v -s -2") or at once ("usbimager -2vs"), the order doesn't matter. For flags that set the same thing, only the last taken into account (for example "-124" is the same as "-4").

The first argument which is not a flag (does not start with '-') is used as the backup image directory.

The '-m' allows you to specify the maximum disk size in Gigabytes. Any disk bigger than this will be considered a large disk (by default 256 Gigabytes).

With '-a', all devices will be listed, even system disks and large disks. With this you can seriously damage your computer, be careful!

The '-v' and '-vv' flags will make USBImager to be verbose, and it will print out details to the console. That is stdout on Linux and MacOSX (so run this in a Terminal), and on Windows a spearate window will be opened for messages.

The last two character of '-Lxx' flag can be "en", "es", "de", "fr" etc. Using this flag forces a specific language dictionary and avoids automatic detection. If there's no such dictionary, then English is used.

The number flags sets the buffer size to the power of two Megabytes (0 = 1M, 1 = 2M, 2 = 4M, 3 = 8M, 4 = 16M, ... 9 = 512M). When not specified, buffer size defaults to 1 Megabyte.

By default, one block of data is read in, compared to the buffer, and only written if they differ. This is useful on media which are very slow to write, have limited write cycles, but fast to read. With the '-f' force flag this comparision is ommited, and the data is always written to the disk.

If you start USBImager with the '-s' flag (lowercase), then it will allow you to send images to serial ports as well. For this, your user has to be the member of the "uucp" or "dialout" groups (differs in distributions, use "ls -la /dev/|grep tty" to see which one). In this case on the client side:

the client must wait indefinitely for the first byte to arrive, then store that byte into a buffer
then it must read further bytes with a timeout (let's say 250 ms or 500 ms) and store those in the buffer as well
when the timeout occurs, the image is received.

The '-S' flag (uppercase) is similar, but then USBImager will do a raspbootin hand-shake on the serial line:

USBImager awaits for the client
client sends 3 bytes, '\003\003\003' (3 times Ctrl+C)
USBImager sends size of the image, 4 bytes in little-endian (size = 4th byte * 16777216 + 3rd byte * 65536 + 2nd byte * 256 + 1st byte)
client responds with two bytes, either 'OK' or 'SE' (size error)
if the response was OK, then USBImager sends the image, size bytes
when the client got the sizeth byte, the image is received.

For both case the serial line is set to 115200 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit. For serial transfers, USBImager does not uncompress the image to minimize transfer times, so that has to be done on the client side. For a simple boot loader that's compatible with USBImager, take a look at Image Receiver (available for RPi1, 2, 3, 4 and IBM PC BIOS machines). Also used to send emergency initial ramdisks to BOOTBOOT compliant boot loaders.

If you want to use a different baud, just simply add it to the flag, like "-s57600" or "-S230400". Valid values are: 57600, 115200, 230400, 460800, 500000, 576000, 921600, 1000000, 1152000, 1500000, 2000000, 2500000, 3000000, 3500000, 4000000

WARNING: not every serial port supports all baud rates. Check you device's manual.

The '-F(xlfd)' (font) flag allows to manually specify which X11 font to use (X11 variants only). Make sure that the specified XLFD ends in "iso10646-1", because only UNICODE fonts supported. For example (quotes needed so that the shell won't try to resolve the asterix):

./usbimager "-F-*-*-*-r-*-*-18-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1" -v

Compilation

Please refer to the Appendix in the manual.

Known Issues

None. If you find any, please use the issue tracker.

Authors

libui: Pietro Gagliardi
bzip2: Julian R. Seward
xz: Igor Pavlov and Lasse Collin
zlib: Mark Adler
zstd: FB, various contributors (see http://www.zstd.net)
zip format: bzt (no PKWARE-related lib nor source was used in this project)
usbimager: bzt

Contributors

I'd like to say thanks to @mattmiller, @MisterEd, @the_scruss, @rpdom, @DarkElvenAngel, @9001, and especially to @tvjon, @CaptainMidnight and @gitlabhack for testing USBImager on various platforms with various devices.

My thanks for checking and fixing the translations goes to: @mline, @vordenken (German), @epoch1970 and @JumpZero (French), @hansotten and @zonstraal (Dutch), @ller (Russian), @zaval (Ukrainian), @lmarmisa (Spanish), @otani, @hrko99 (Japanese), @ngedizaydindogmus (Turkish), @coltrane (Portuguese), @Matthaiks (Polish), @tomasz86 (Korean), @flaribbit (Chinese), @kaneda44 (Catalan).

Further thanks to @munntjlx, @lfomartins, @luckman212 and @tshup for compiling USBImager on MacOS for me, and to @tido- for the Ubuntu debs when my VirtualBox was broken.

And thanks to @cwongmath and @tshup, for the help they've provided with the macOS version. Thanks!

Bests,

bzt

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