How to restore a dmg containing multiple partitions to USB flash drive?

Question

How to restore a dmg containing multiple partitions to USB flash drive?

I have a .dmg file which was created from a disk consisting of two partitions. When I mount the dmg both partitions pop up, so I know the imaging worked properly.

So far, I've been unable to restore the dmg to a flash drive where both partitions are accounted for. I've tried using Disk Utility, hdiutil, dd, asr, and rain dancing, none of which will restore the image properly. Usually, these other methods will restore only one of the partitions.

I'm sure I'm misconfiguring something along the way, and I'm hoping some of you ninjas out there can direct me accordingly.

Thanks!

Mac Pro

Posted on Feb 12, 2019 9:38 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 12, 2019 10:18 AM in response to Eric Root

The USB drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended. The two partitions are formatted Mac OS Extended and Fat32. Would the difference in formatting arrest a restore done by any of the command line utilities or Disk Utility?

I figure there must be a way to do a byte-for-byte restore of an image to a disk, USB or otherwise, which would maintain the formatting and partitioning of the source.

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Answer 2

Feb 12, 2019 5:19 PM in response to Eric Root

Thanks for your reply.

I was able to partition the drive accordingly manually with Disk Utility and then restore both partitions from the dmg file to the resulting partitions. But this doesn't really solve my problem.

I'd prefer there to be a way to use the command line to do a direct copy of the image to the drive and reduce the number of steps to 1. I figure there must be a way to do that since people make bulk drives all the time with a myriad of different configuration and partitions.

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