Fenestrating the Handbook memstick section

[Glen Barber]

Hi,

On 1/17/11 8:41 PM, Warren Block wrote:
> Currently, the Handbook only shows how to create a FreeBSD install
> memstick by using dd(1).  This leaves the Windows crowd unaddressed.
> 
> I've done some searching for a Windows utility to write memory sticks
> that is freely available and simple to use.
> 

Thank you for looking into this, by the way.

> There's a dd for Windows (http://www.chrysocome.net/dd), but it's
> difficult to use due to target names that are hard to associate with
> drive letters, and just plain complex.  For example,
> \\?\Device\Harddisk5\Partition0.
> 
> There's http://www.winimage.com/winimage.htm, which is general-purpose
> and shareware.
> 
> Finally, there's https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer, which is
> Image Writer for Windows or win32diskimager depending on how you look.
> Done by the Ubuntu folks.  GPLV2.  Easy to use.  The best option I've
> found so far.

IMHO, this sounds like the easiest option for the end-user.

> The questions:
> 
> Is there a better Windows utility for writing a memory stick image?
> 
> If we recommend Image Writer for Windows, seems like it would be polite
> to ask the project before taking advantage of their download capacity.
> Or would it be better to have a copy hosted on a FreeBSD server?

I'm curious what the general consensus is on this last question myself.

Cheers,

-- 
Glen Barber