USBImager

USBImager is a small, portable and open source utility designed to write compressed disk images to USB drives. The tool can come in handy for creating backups while accounting for free space at the same time. According to the developer, the tool is built to avoid overwriting of disks and can make synchronized writes. Users can easily verify the claims by comparing the disk to the image.

Given its role, it is only natural that the application can read the common formats used for backups, including, but not limited to ISO, RAW, BIN, IMG, GZ, BZ2 and ZIP. The files created can be in various RAW formats as well as ZStandard, one of the most commonly used lossless data compression algorithms. To avoid any issues when creating backups, it is recommended that the executable is run with the 'Run as Administrator' option.

When writing an image to a device, the file format and compression are auto-detected, so users solely need to select the device. On the other hand, when attempting to create an image from a device, then the format is usbimager-(date)T(time).dd, where the date and time correspond to the timestamp when the file is generated. By checking the Compress options, the file gets an addition suffix – ZST – and the image is compressed using ZStandard.