DistroCopy

DistroCopy_128

Did you ever need to distribute 100 USB drives or more with video, stills etc. and had to drag the files to each one? Now you don’t have to do that anymore.

New in version 1.2

  • support for macOS Catalina

Features

  • MD5 Checksum
  • auto eject for Learn device

DistroCopy is a tool that lets you copy files to several devices (like USB drives) simultaneously.

USB-sticksThe copies are made simultaneously, so it’s very fast. DistroCopy can also format each drive either as FAT32 or HFS+.

A speed example
Copying 2.9 GB in 2 545 files using:

Finder to 1 drive – 2 min 14 sec
Finder to 2 drives – 4 min 45 sec
DistroCopy to 6 drives (incl. formating) – 2 min 23 sec
DistroCopy to 6 drives (incl. formating) and MD5 checksum – 3 min 13 sec

As you can see, you can save a lot of time. I did copy 2.5 GB to 200 USB-drives under 2 hours including all handling.

DistroCopy also removes all “._”-files when the drive is formated as FAT32, so the drive will look clean on a Windows machine as well. (read more about this below)

So how does it work?

DistroCopy_1.1_start

Source: Select where the files are that you want to copy onto the drives.

Learn: This function learns the kind of drive you want to copy to. Insert a drive you want to copy to, then select the drive. Eject the drive when you see the device name next to the Learn button.
It’s important to know that DistroCopy only copies to the type of drive you select here. This is a safety feature, so you don’t format any other kind of drive you happen to insert while the copy process is running.

Name: Here you enter the name you want the drives to have. You have to enter the name before you can select the type of Format.

Format: If you want to format and rename the drive. Format either as FAT32 or HFS+. You need to enter a name before you can select the kind of format.
I recommend to always use this feature, so you are sure that the drive is clean before you start copying.

MD5 Checksum: This will calculate the MD5 checksums for all source files. These checksums will then be used to verify that the files that were copied to the devices are correct.

Start: Then press start and you can insert your drives.

DistroCopy_1.1_MD5

The drives will be formated and renamed. Once this is done the copy process will start to each drive.

DistroCopy-prefs

In Preferences you can select “Show files”. This will then show each file that is copied. If you have many files this will slow down the copy process and it will be hard to read, since the filenames just scroll past the screen.

DistroCopy_1.1_done

The drive will be unmounted after all files are copied to it. You will hear a sound when all drives are ready and unmounted. Disconnect the drives and connect the next batch.

I don’t recommend to start disconnecting until all drives are done, since it’s not sure that they will be finished in the same order as they where inserted.

SIP

In case you want to copy to a FAT32 drive and remove the ._ and Mac System files you might need to turn off SIP (System Integrity Protection). If you use a computer with El Capitan 10.11 or newer you need to disable SIP, otherwise these files are not deleted.

To turn off SIP is not recommended for daily use.

What you need to do is
– restart the computer and boot into Recovery mode (press Command+R while starting computer)
– start Terminal (from the Utilities menu)
– write the command: csrutil disable
– reboot the computer

Now use DistroCopy.

When done
– restart the computer and boot into Recovery mode (press Command+R while starting computer)
– start Terminal (from the Utilities menu)
– write the command: csrutil enable
– reboot the computer

Download

Download the demo-version.

The Demo version allows you to format all inserted drives, but it will only copy the files to the first drive.

To buy and register the demo-version, and get the full functionality, please visit FastSpring and buy it.

Price: USD 50