I am shocked by this - the quote in below is very concerning:
“However, in 2024, the situation changed: balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties.”
Can’t see myself using this software anymore…
Why use a fancy GUI tool when good old
dd
does the trickpv
for life.dd status=progress
can also tell you how far along the operation is.Dang, nice! I’ve been using dd for nearly 30 years and have never seen that. I actually used to used dcfldd because it had better progress reporting than dd (and supported repeated patterns for input). Thanks for sharing!
cat is the tool of distinguished gentlemen
cp command works well too
Because of the risk of accidentally wiping the main drive if you’re just copy pasting stuff
If that happens to you, that’s both a great reminder that mindlessly copy-pasting commands from the internet is a terrible idea, and a chance to practice your restore-from-backup routine! I see no downsides.