and I forgot, after the dd finishes, you should flush the buffers to disk to make sure everything is written to your USB key. So type : sudo sync
And anything not written to the disk will be written right now.
Good luck!
It did not work. Will trying flushing buffers to disk next.
Sync did not help either.
I am looking for an exorcist. 
GParted is showing sdc as unallocated file system.
I thought a partition table was needed to make a bootable pen drive ?
While my file manager is showing the Redo Backup files on the pen drive.
Something ain’t right here.
Does the pen drive have to formatted to a specific type for dd to work ?
I have already tried formatting it to fat 32.
This would happen if you have copied an iso file on the fat 32 file system on your usb key.
First unmount the usb stick and do the dd :
umount /dev/sdc
sudo dd if=/home/andy/redobackup.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=10M & sudo sync
dd will write block by block on the device directly. It doesn’t use any filesystem only a position on the disk (cylinder, head, block). The only thing you need is a container : the USB key. And it needs to be unused by any other process.
Check this post if you want to have more details :
Ubuntu_howto
Regards,
BT
PS: Note that destination is “of=/dev/sdc” not “/dev/sdc1” wich would not work also …
1 Like
Will see what happens.
andy@7:~$ sudo dd if=/home/andy/Downloads/redobackup-livecd-1.0.4.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=10M & sudo sync
[2] 2702
andy@7:~$ 24+1 records in
24+1 records out
261480448 bytes (261 MB, 249 MiB) copied, 2.82854 s, 92.4 MB/s
No luck. 
I am going to put Clonezilla on a pen drive.
If it boots to Clonezilla, I will conclude that Redo Backup just does not work from a pen drive.
It works when put on a CD.
Thanks for all your help.
I successfully installed Clonezilla to my pen drive.
No problem booting to it.
Conclusion:
Despite what their website says, Redo Backup can NOT be installed to a pen drive.
I’m not so sure about your conclusion. It sounded like you were seeing a funky fiesystem on /sdc after writing to the USB-stick on that device. That does not mean the stick will not boot, you have to test it to find out if it will boot. With the advent of GPT and UEFI and all that stuff, sometimes i’ve seen a partition flagged as unknown, or as a mac filesystem, but that doesn’t mean it won’t boot.
Once again, great “full” explanation of terminal commands (dd in this case) and what they (1) are for and (2) what they do. Thanks samuvuo.
So how do I test the stick to see if it boots ?
I followed your method.
Still can’t boot it.
@fixit7: Ate my own dogfood: I downloaded the ISO file, created a bootable USB stick with dd using the steps outlined above. Bootable stick was created ok - technically - so nothing wrong with the dd advice given. Only that it doesn’t 's boot. So you were right about that one.
I mounted the ISO using loop device and took a look at what’s inside.
First finds: it uses Isolinux (Syslinux) boot loader and all files were from year 2012, apart from autorun.*, which were from 2011. I stopped right there.
Hell must freeze over before I let something as mission critical as system backups be handled by software that was last updated 4.5 years ago. Period.
My free tip of the day: we use review sites when thinking about buying something (a new car, fridge, computer, booking a hotel) because it makes sense to learn from other people’s (possible) mistakes. Do the same with software.
If a software project has its code hosted at Sourceforge, Github etc. do take a look, even if they have a separate homesite (a flashy “marketing site”). Check when the last commit was made, how many bugs / issues are open and are bugs / issues being handled in a timely manner (check the closed ones). Doing this saves a lot of your time, not to mention blood, sweat and tears.
You’re better off using Clonezilla.
1 Like
I’m always interested in failures having had many of my own - and have mostly learned from them.
I downloaded the redobackup-livecd-1.0.4.iso from sourceforge.net and used MATE’s Startup Disk Creator to make a bootable USB key. After rebooting, and selecting boot from USB, I got a message saying something like no bootable partition found… and was dropped into grub and then back into MATE.
Maybe the iso could be used to make a bootable CD? I’m finished following this particular rat down its’ hole however. Clonezilla is better for sure.
Redo seems to want to know if it’s users experience difficulties. Perhaps the OP will contact them?
Edit: I tried another tack. This time, after using GParted to reformat the USB key to fat 32, I used UNetbootin to create a “bootable” USB key from the iso. But before rebooting, I opened GParted to see if there was a boot flag set on the “bootable” USB. There was not. So I set the boot flag using GParted and rebooted, selecting boot from USB. I saw a UNetbootin menu and selected Redo backup and then was in Redo. That’s as far as I went - the USB key was bootable.
So I wasn’t exactly finished following this rat. I got a better ending however…
Yes, in their download page they do say it’s a CD image and outline steps for using UNetbootin if you want to create a bootable USB stick directly, without burning a CD first. I didn’t feel like spending more time with it though, after seeing what was inside. It’s a pity, really - the concept was/is great.
1 Like
No problem.
Clonezilla works great.
Thanks for taking to time to test it out.
I will stick with Clonezilla.
Someone got it to work, but it has to be done with Windows.
Does not change my mind about not using Redo Backup.
Redo Backup can NOT be put on a pen drive. (Despite what their
webpage says.)
I’m downloading it as we speak. redobackuplivecd1.0.4 I’m going to
fire up Rufus v2.12p in Windows XP to load this pendrive (4gig USB
stick, generic stick at that) and test the results. gimmie a few
here…
Results are as follows. Ran Rufus, selected iso; left everything else
untouched. (created using ISO method, didn’t even have to use DD!)
Put USB stick into Acer laptop, started machine. It loaded just fine!
Picked up network card, too! So, I could at this point, ‘clone’ this
machine to another box on this network. ■■■■ easy program to use,
too.
this might actually be a keeper. I didn’t try this with tuxboot,
because I don’t think? it’s on my linux boxes, but… I’ll check it
out later just to see if that might be your issue.
Anyways, using rufus v2.12p (portable) in iso mode does work fine.
I edited the how-to post earlier in this thread and added instructions on how to format the USB stick using command line tools, once you want to return the stick to regular data use.
I also made a change to the original “Make bootable USB stick” instructions replacing udisksctl power-off -b /dev/sdc with _eject -v /dev/sd_c because if your stick is plugged into a hub, the udisksctl power-off command may power down the hub also, which most likely is not what you want if you have other devices plugged into it.