[TriLUG] Create EXT3 compact flash devices from Windows

[Paul McLanahan]

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 1:34 AM, Rodney Radford <rradford at mindspring.com> wrote:
> I know one option is to ship out a Knoppix CD that the customer can insert into his Windows PC, boot it, and have it create the CF (possibly even having it automatically 'phone home' to see what updates are available).  However, I was wondering if there was any other options - specifically, something like RAWRITE that can run directly on the Windows box. This would allow them to simply download the .img file, even download the utility, and then run the utility to create the CF.  This seems like something that would be possible, but my google searches are coming up empty.

I've done this very thing when installing a m0n0wall onto a CF card.

http://m0n0.ch/wall/installation_generic.php
http://m0n0.ch/wall/physdiskwrite.php

The 2nd link is a windows utility that does what you want. I've used
it, and it works, but it could be confusing for your clients. There's
a GUI utility on that page as well that could help if you can give
them good instructions, but you might get away with some creative
batch scripting and just the utility, though the risk of overwriting a
user's HDD is a bit scary.

There's also RawWriteWin (http://www.chrysocome.net/rawwrite), but I
have no experience with it. The dd for windows that Stephen linked to
looks good too. Hopefully one of these will work for you.

Good luck,

Paul