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I saved an image of a USB stick using Win32 Disk Imager, which produced only a .bin file of the same size as the drive.

Is it possible to read this .bin file as if it were a drive? I have access to Windows, macOS, Linux.

What I've tried

  • Mounting it with Daemon Tools (it refuses without a .cue file) and macOS Disk Utility (cannot select .bin files)
  • Found tutorials about creating a .cue file by hand (no customization whatsoever, just "paste this text into a new file and rename it to xyz.cue"). I don't understand how that could possibly work since that would then suggest that .cue files are superfluous. It didn't work (Daemon Tools), obviously.
  • Following instructions to use it as a loop device on linux, i.e. losetup -p /dev/loop0 win-usb.bin and expecting at least one partition to show up as /dev/loop0pX in order to mount it — it didn't. Did I misunderstand something here?

  • Also briefly tried looking at it with the allegedly superseded kpartx -l win-usb.bin → loop1p1 : 0 62533294 /dev/loop1 3 but not really sure what it tells me.

  • Reading up on .bin .img .iso getting none the wiser. Did Win32 Disk Imager create a raw image of my drive, or some magic format? I've been assuming the former.

The drive only had a Windows To Go installation for BIOS. Do I just have to mount my /dev/loop0 with some magic numbers? I'm unsure about how to reason my way to those numbers.

So far the only option I know of to actually read the contents of my image is to find another USB drive and use Win32 Disk Imager to restore the .bin.

References

  • Loop device answers one, and two that didn't work all the way. Please note that this question is specifically about the kind of .bin files produced by Win32 Disk Imager and not about an .img from dd.
Andreas
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1 Answers1

6

You should be able to mount it as a RAM disk using OSFMount, and you shouldn't need a .cue file.

With that installed click "Mount new..", make sure "Image file" is selected and browse to the .bin file and select it. You can then choose to mount either all or only one partition from the image and choose the drive letter you want to mount it as (and whether you want it to be readonly or not).

motosubatsu
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