Smart USB Clone Script

A smart, interactive Bash script designed to clone bootable USB drives efficiently.

Unlike standard cloning tools that copy every single byte of a drive (including empty space), this tool calculates exactly where your data ends and copies only the used partitions. This allows you to clone a large source drive (e.g., 128GB with only 7GB of data) onto a smaller target drive (e.g., 16GB), provided the data fits.

🚀 Features

• Smart Size Calculation: Automatically detects the end of the last partition to avoid copying empty space.
• Interactive Workflow: Prompts you to insert the target drive only when needed, reducing the risk of overwriting the wrong disk.
• Safety Checks:
  • Verifies root privileges.
  • Prevents cloning if Source and Target are the same device.
  • Calculates if the Target drive has enough physical capacity before starting.
• Universal Compatibility: Works with both Legacy BIOS (MBR/DOS) and UEFI (GPT) partition schemes.
• Auto-Repair: Automatically fixes GPT backup headers on the target drive using sgdisk if necessary.

📋 Prerequisites

You need a Linux system with the following standard tools installed:

• bash
• parted (for partition analysis)
• lsblk (for size detection)
• dd (for the actual copying)
• gdisk (provides sgdisk for GPT repairs)

Installation on Debian/Ubuntu/Kali:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install parted gdisk