Unix tricks: Create a Portable Drive

Create a Portable Drive
unix tricks

Unix Tricks

• Create a blank file of 256 MB :

dd if=/dev/zero of=~/portable.drive bs=1M count=256

• Create an ext4  filesystem within the file:

mkfs -t ext4 ~/portable.drive

you can replace ext4 with ext2, ext3, vfat, msdos, minix etc.

• Create a mount point:

mkdir ~/mnt/

• Mount the File/Drive:

sudo mount -t ext4 ~/portable.drive ~/mnt/

  ••Now you can browse the drive••

• Unmount the drive:

sudo umount ~/mnt/

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Advantages
• Easy to carry files stored in one container.
• Good for hiding data and files from plain sight.if you share your computer with others
• Usable across unix System.

Disadvantages
• No security or encryption set/applied.
• Cannot be viewed, opened in Windows natively.

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Read more at Wikipedia
• dd
• mkdir
• mkfs
• mount
• sudo
• umount

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note:
The file created by this method can only be open and read by unix and unix-like system. Natively Windows cannot open this kind of file. but its possible to open it with Cywin

software.

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