how to create an image file from a macos usb installer?

[olee]

I have a flash drive that is a clover macos installer. I'd like to keep that drive around so I can do it again in the future, but I don't want to keep this flash drive just laying around not being used. I'd like to create an image of the contents so I can repurpose the drive, but be able to restore it back to it at a later point ( make it bootable again too ).

i tried Disk utility,its not work,cant boot up,seems lack efi partition.

thanks.

[shantur]

Try this https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-create-disk-image-on-mac-os-x-with-dd-command/

 

This will make a raw disk image

[HenryV]

Since OC and Clover kexts may be updated frequently, if you have an installer that uses hfs+ you can back up the installer portion using partclone from linux where  x in /dev/sdxy is the lsblk -f  disk and y is the lsblk -f  partition.

 

sudo partclone.hfsp -c -s /dev/sdxy | pbzip2 -c9 > /your/backup/location/whatevernameyouwant.pcl.gz

 

Example: sudo partclone.hfsp -c -s /dev/sdb2 | pbzip2 -c9 > /media/backup_mac_injstaller.pcl.gz

 

Make sure you have pbzip and compression such as lz4 installed in linux.

 

Using partclone over dd backs up only used sectors.

Edited November 8, 2020 by HenryV

[DoYouBelieveInMiracles]

You can use Apple's default createinstallmedia command on Terminal.