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Creating a NEW larger casper-rw loop file (LINUX)

The following method will create a casper-rw file that will replace the old one. If you want to resize an existing image see the next section.

1. After your up and running in Linux, insert the flash drive that contains your casper-rw loop file
2. Open a terminal
3. Type the following into the terminal
   

   dd if=/dev/zero of=casper-rw bs=1M count=1024

   (replacing 1024 with the “size in MB” you wish to use for saving changes persistently)

4. Type the following into the terminal
   

   mkfs.ext2 -F casper-rw

5. Copy the new casper-rw file to your USB flash drive
6. Restart your computer, booting from the USB flash drive and enjoy using the larger casper-rw loop block file you have just created.

Resize an existing casper-rw loop file (LINUX)

The following method will allow you to resize your existing casper-rw image (expand casper-rw). You should create a backup just in case before proceeding.

1. After your up and running in Linux, insert the flash drive that contains your casper-rw loop file
2. Open a terminal and change directory (CD) to the location of your casper-rw file
3. Type the following into the terminal window and press enter
   

   dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=1024 >> casper-rw

   (replacing 1024 with the size in MB you wish to increase the original size by)

4. Type the following into the terminal window and press enter
   

   resize2fs casper-rw

If all goes well, you should now have a larger casper-rw loop file to use for saving your persistent changes.

Create or resize an existing casper-rw loop file (WINDOWS) :

TopoResize is a Free Image Resizing Tool create by Chris Semler that can be used to resize images containing an ext2 or ext3 file systemwithin Windows. This nifty tool can be used to create a new image and shrink or enlarge an existing image. Cygwin is used to port Linux file system tools like efs2progs to Windows. TopoResize can be used to resize casper-rw loop files and even resize Pendrivelinux 2009 filesystem images. TopoResize was witten by Chris Semler and was mainly used to resize coLinux ext2 and ext3 file system images.

Note: The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GB minus 1 byte. So keep in mind that TopoResize cannot exceed this limitation if your storing the resulting image on a Fat32 volume.

How to Resize a casper-rw loop file using TopoResize

1. Download TopoResize and unzip it’s contents
2. Click toporesize.bat from the TopoResize folder to start the program
3. Once the application starts, (1) Click find file and navigate to the casper-rw file you would like to resize, (2) Drag the slider to the desired capacity, (3) Click Resize file

That’s all there is to it. If all goes well, you should now have a resized casper-rw partition.

TopoResize is portable, so it can be stored and run from a USB device.

Alternately, you can use Casper-RW Creator to create a casper-rw persistent file in Windows.