How to shrink USB clone DD file image output

This article we discuss a procedure on how to shrink USB image made by dd command. Here is the example scenario. You have made four partitions with a total disk space of 3GB:

# sfdisk -l -uM ubuntu_USB.img
sfdisk: Disk ubuntu_USB.img: cannot get geometry


Disk ubuntu_USB.img: 950 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units: 1MiB = 1024*1024 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start   End    MiB    #blocks   Id  System
ubuntu_USB.img1         1     50     50      51200    b  W95 FAT32
ubuntu_USB.img2        51    150    100     102400    b  W95 FAT32
ubuntu_USB.img3   *   151   2650   2500    2560000    b  W95 FAT32
ubuntu_USB.img4      2651   3000    350     358400    b  W95 FAT32

This partition table exists on your USB drive and with dd command you have made a clone copy to a file called usb_dd.img. However, the output dd image file has size equal to the size of your USB memory stick rather than to have a size of sum of all partitions. One block is equal to 1MB ( 1024 * 1024 ) bytes, that is, the expected size should be 3000MB. However, instead we get 7.3G. This is because dd command will clone entire block device by default while disregarding entire partition layout:

# ls -lh ubuntu_USB.img
-rw-rw-r--. 1 lubos lubos 7.3G Jan 24 11:37 ubuntu_USB.img

Next, we need to get a total number of sectors in order to remove the excess disk size from this image. To get this information run:

# fdisk -l -u ubuntu_USB.img

Disk ubuntu_USB.img: 7818 MB, 7818182656 bytes, 15269888 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000804a3

          Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
ubuntu_USB.img1            2048      104447       51200    b  W95 FAT32
ubuntu_USB.img2          104448      309247      102400    b  W95 FAT32
ubuntu_USB.img3   *      309248     5429247     2560000    b  W95 FAT32
ubuntu_USB.img4         5429248     6146047      358400    b  W95 FAT32

The last sector is 6146047. Next ,use dd command to create another image but only up to the last sector:

# dd if=ubuntu_USB.img of=ubuntu_USB.iso count=6146047
ALTERNATIVELY CLONE DIRECTLY FROM USB eg.:
# dd if=/dev/sdX of=ubuntu_USB.iso count=6146047

The resulting image will have a correct image size based on the sum of its partition(s).

$ ls -lh ubuntu_USB.iso 
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 3.0G Jan 24 11:58 ubuntu_USB.iso


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