this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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I am having issues getting results on searches because I get a bunch of results for doing a many ISOs to one USB (like Ventoy). Though I do get some results for hardware devices that can clone one USB to one or more blank USBs. But those hardware devices sell for hundreds of dollars.

I have a periodic need to update around 17 bootable USB drives at work. The drives are burned from ISO files (PC repair tools) and need to be updated with updated versions of the ISO. Currently I have to start each one at a time and is annoying (not as bad as some sys admins out there needing to do hundreds of drives).

So I was wondering if anyone knows of FOSS (or even mostly FOSS) plans/instructions for making a one to many USB clone hardware device using RPi or similar (I have a RPi 5 and a Pico W atm)? If a purpose built hardware device isn't around. Are there any FOSS software programs for Windows (my only real option at work) that can handle taking one ISO to burn onto many USBs? I am fine with it doing them one at a time if they are all plugged-in automatically or if it can do small groups of like four or five.

Just seems like out of all the different guides/plans/kits for things like RPi or similar-ish boards. That there would be something like those pricey one to many cloning devices. Thanks in advance to everyone that can point me to anything useful!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

If you use a raspberry pi for each USB device, you could use multicast to distribute the iso across the network once and have each pi write it to the USB drive connected locally.

I also had a quick look around and found this:

One other idea I came across was to setup the devices as a raid array and write to the raid device.