Question for the GRM brain trust: Off-topic discussion forum: Grassroots Motorsports Magazine

Subscribe get a full year for only $23.95 Sample Free Test Drive—no strings attached

Jan. 16, 2012 11:00 a.m. Strizzo SuperDork

We are about to purchase a bunch of 4gb flash drives for various uses. nearly all of which require the ability to hook up a quantity of them to a computer and copy a set of files to all of them at once. these files could be as small as a couple hundred meg or up to 3GB.

i'm looking for a program that will automatically copy these files to all of the drives, so that someone doesn't have to individually click and paste into every thumbdrive.

i'm sure someone on here has come across an issue like this, what says GRM?
Jan. 16, 2012 11:04 a.m. N Sperlo SuperDork

You could click and drag a few times or make a complicated program. I think clicking and dragging is easier. Just my 32 cents.
Jan. 16, 2012 11:24 a.m. aircooled SuperDork

I had someone tell me the other day there is a hardware solution for that. Some sort of box that you plug the master and a bunch of targets into and it does the copy automatically.

Found them:

https://www.google.com/search?q=thumb+drive+duplicator&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

http://www.amazon.com/Aleratec-Copy-Cruiser-Mini-330109/dp/B004J66EE2

Not cheap though.
Jan. 16, 2012 11:31 a.m. peter Reader

which OS? A small shell script on linux/Mac would do it, no problem. That other OS, who knows...
Jan. 16, 2012 12:40 p.m. Strizzo SuperDork

Thanks for the quick responses! this looks like a good start. does anyone know of any cheap or open source software that could acomplish similar with just a USB hub?

clicking and dragging is fine for a couple drives at a time, but we're looking at loading up 500-1000 drives in a session with the same set of files.
Jan. 16, 2012 1:24 p.m. mapper Reader

I use the cheap version of ViceVersa from TGRMN at work to handle some repetitive file copying. I written scripts to handle some things but dedicated software opens up a lot more options. If you are buying for just one or two computers it is pretty cheap.
Jan. 16, 2012 1:36 p.m. Dr. Hess SuperDork

The hardware solution would be the easiest, I'd think. But...

Put your files to be copied in to a directory like c:source. Plug a thumb drive in. (windoze maps thumb drive to something like F:) Open a command window (start - run - cmd)

In da window:

c: cd (backslash key... the editor here chokes on it)

copy con go.bat

copy c:(backslash)source(backslash)(star).(star) f:

(control-z) (enter)

then, after that, just type "go" and enter. All the files from the source directory will be copied to the thumb drive. Pop another thumb drive in it's place, type go again (or up arrow, then enter). A thousand might take a while. I like the hardware solution better, but if labor is cheaper, go for it.