I’m making USB sticks from an image for a conference. The conference files total 520 MB in size and the image of the drive is around the same size. The USB stick (fat32) that was used as a base was copied in windows (to avoid the mac’s hidden resource fork), but the image of it was made using the Mac disk utility.
I’ve successfully flashed 200+ 4 GB sticks in batches of ten using a 10x hub – Etcher has been a godsend in that respect, thank you – and now I am making a few extras as reserves on older 2GB sticks.
Etcher reports these as being too small, although the image is 520MB. I’m using balenaetcher version 1.19.21 (1.19.21) on two Macs (one intel, one arm) running Sonoma 14.6.1.
Is there any workaround for this? Time is unfortunately of the essence…
Is this happening for all 2GB sticks or only some?
Does your OS confirm the problematic sticks are actually 2GB?
Is this happening on both Macs?
Have you tried without using the hub?
It seems odd that you had no problem with 200+ 4GB sticks, but are now having issues with some older 2GB sticks. It may be worth checking that the 2GB sticks are actually usable by trying a different tool to flash the same or a different image on these sticks. This would also help in figuring out if its actually a balenaEtcher problem or not.
Thanks for the speedy reply, however time was really of the essence and the conference began today and the sticks are now with the delegates. If it helps:
The OS does confirm they are 2GB
I tried with and without the hub
In the end I copied with a bash script that I used in the past that basically rsync’s the content over, then renames the drives and cleans out dot files / Mac resource forks. All much slower than using etcher, and without any progress feedback in the terminal. Long story short, the sticks did work.
But it got me thinking. I originally had such problems creating a clean stick without spotlight files .trashes etc. that I borrowed a PC and made the first stick on the PC using a 4GB Stick. I first tried a USB image maker programme on windows (I forget which) but it made me a nearly 4GB image despite the files only occupying 520MB. I then tried another tack, and used the Mac’s disk utility to make an image which weighed around 520MB. Much better, but the image was made from a 4GB stick. Might that be the reason why trying to flash that to a 2GB stick did not work?
Given the time constraints, what are the fastest alternatives to balenaEtcher that might bypass this issue, or could a command-line approach using dd or another tool help me achieve my goal more efficiently?