GUI Software Review ImageWriter

So over the last year I've really gotten into my Raspberry Pi. If you've never heard of a Raspberry Pi it's a tiny computer that costs under $50.00. It's not super powerful but it's perfect for running small tasks like stake mining cryptocurrency or running a bot on twitter. It's also a low power consumption device, making it the perfect device to run 24/7 without running up the power bill. The best part is it runs on a debian based operating system.

I've been using mine for staking OKcash cryptocurrency and also running a bot on twitter. My cousin got me the latest model the Pi 3 for Christmas and I needed to get it set up. The Pi utilizes a micro SD card for a hard drive and I needed to image the SD card with the ROKOS operating system. Which brings me to what this post is all about.

The last time I tried to do this using my OpenSuse laptop I had disastrous results. I don't know what I was doing wrong but something kept corrupting the disk image. I ended up using a friends Windows computer to get the job done. The shame! It doesn't happen often but occasionally I will resort to a Windows PC. That wasn't an option this time, but I found a great little program that was easy to install, easy to use, it's GUI and it got the job done. The program is called ImageWriter and it will image a USB drive or SD card quickly and effeciently. As far as I know it's available in most repositories.

apt-cache search imagewriter
zypper search imagewriter

So I found the program in my repository and installed it.

zypper install imagewriter

Once it was installed I found it in my application launcher in the utilities category. I opened the program and was thrilled with how easy it was to use.

1) Open the program
2) Insert the USB drive or SD card. The second it's inserted ImageWriter recognized it.
3) Click on the square in the center of the program.
4) Go to the directory with the image that needs to be burned and select it.
5) Write image to disk.

Click on the square to select the image to burn,

Select image.

Click write and wait for progress bar to reach 100% and disappear.

That's it! You're done! Simple, easy, and fast. Fantastic program.  The only weird thing about it is that the progress bar gets to 100% and just disappears. There's no message that reads, "Job complete" or "Write Completed" no system bell, beep or other notification. It just disappears and you're sort of left wondering if it's really finished.

Format USB Pen Drive With Gparted Linux GUI

I've had a pen drive for a couple years that I use regularly. It always comes in handy, and gets used often. Last night I decided it was time to remove all the data and wipe the drive. I started fumbling around in the command line looking for my USB pen drive and realized that there had to be an easier way to accomplish this task. Then I thought about Gparted. Gparted is a great program to use when you have to re-partition your hard drive or any partitioned device. It's a GUI and works great.

I did a yum search gparted, and found the program in the repositories. I installed the program using yum install gparted. Yum did all the work and gparted was installed. I opened my system folder, found the link for gparted, and opened up the program.

Before you open Gparted you have to plug in your USB pen drive. Once you open Gparted it will ask for your password, and then it will search for any partitions on the system. In the upper right hand corner of the program you want to click on the /dev/sda drop down menu and find your USB pen drive. On my system it was found on /dev/sdb select it by clicking on it. In the main part of the program you will see the partitions listed for your USB pen drive. On mine I had a 3.81 Gib partition, and a 14.23 Mib partition. I'm pretty sure you want to leave the smaller partition alone as this loads the device or makes it recognizable in any system you plug it into. I clicked on the larger 3.81 Gib partition listed as /dev/sdb1 on my system and then clicked on Partition , Format to, Fat 32. And Gparted formated the drive quickly.

If you want the drive to be interchangeable with windows machines I strongly suggest the fat32 format option. That's it, all done, I now have a wiped USB pen drive, all the old data is gone, and I now have a clean USB stick to use again hopefully for many more years to come.

I always use Gparted for any partition work I do on my drive. The program is a really easy to use GUI and once loaded it's almost self explanatory. I'm going to be making some changes to my system soon, and will be using this program for some future projects. I'll be posting more on this fantastic tool in future posts.