Hi,
I have a hard-drive Haiku installation that has programs, music, etc on it. Can I install this to a bootable USB thumbrive so that I can re-install it to another hardrive, without losing all the programs and music? I found a lot o information on how to install a nightly image to a USB thumbdrive, but cannot find anything on how to do the same thing with a Haiku installation with extra programs, etc.
Hi enlinea6!
Yes, and it’s easy. 
All you need is launch Installer and choose your current Haiku partition as your source and your USB drive as destination. This will copy everything under /system/ and /home/ to the destination. Stuff outside those folders has to be copied ‘manually’.
Tip: it’s a good idea to empty the Trash before, or you’ll copy all that stuff too…
Regards,
Humdinger
Edited PS: the above is true for a nightly Haiku image. If you’re still on an Alpha4, this might not be correct… Can’t remember anymore. Before wiping your old installation, open your newly created installation and see if everything’s got copied as expected to avoid surprises…
Hi, thanks for your help. My installed hard-drive Haiku version is hrev-46104… newer than the official Alpha4 release.
Does this method also make the USB thumbdrive bootable, or is that an extra step?
Yep, Installer makes the partition bootable. I’m not sure when package management was merged, but it may be worth doing another update to the newest nightly.
Regards,
Humdinger
First, open DriveSetup and format the partition on the USB as a Beos partition, then use Installer to copy it over. Just remember the USB stick must be as big or larger than the amount of data in your boot drive.
I love Haiku Installer so much! This is the easiest system install© tool I’ve ever used. It is the real Haiku&Be style.