All Rights Reserved. Download Rufus and run it on your Windows PC. you need to work on a … Each time you boot into the Ubuntu from this USB drive it will be a fresh instance of Ubuntu. Step 2: If you do not have the ISO file for whichever Linux distribution you need, the software can do it for you. That is our USB drive. How to Create a Bootable Linux USB Flash Drive, the Easy Way, boot from the USB drive using these instructions, How to Respond Directly to a Specific Message in Instagram, How to Add, Edit, or Delete Saved Passwords in Microsoft Edge, How to Quickly Clear All Notifications on Mac, How to Disable Friend Requests on a Nintendo Switch, © 2020 LifeSavvy Media. A bootable USB is super convenient to have on hand if you need to install or repair an operating system on your computer. Linux users traditionally burned ISO files to DVD or CD, but many computers don’t have disc drives anymore. In our example this is sdb. This should display the name of the USB flash drive that you are going to use to create a Linux bootable USB. Then simply restart the system to start the booting for OS installation. Turn on computer. Additionally, the USB drive you expect to boot from. Dave McKay first used computers when punched paper tape was in vogue, and he has been programming ever since. Select the attached USB drive and Insert ISO file. dd will do exactly what you tell it to, as soon as you tell it. (On some PCs, you may also have to disable Secure Boot, depending on the Linux distribution you choose.). Insert the USB flash drive into the USB port. Now, you will need to select the source ISO file and specific device for bootable media. After over 30 years in the IT industry, he is now a full-time technology journalist. Select the Ubuntu ISO file. You can easily make your own bootable USB that’s equipped with the operating system of your choosing. He’s been running the show since creating the site back in 2006. Once you’ve selected the correct options, click the “Start” button to begin creating the bootable drive. You can’t simply copy or extract the ISO file to the USB drive and expect it to work, however. Instead, you need to write booting information to USB drive first, which is not able to be done manually. However, it can be used to create other bootable OS. Warning: This will erase the contents of the target USB drive. Click the “Yes” button to create the bootable USB drive. Now that the ISO file is properly "burned" to the USB drive, you can boot from it and then continue with whatever it is you're using this bootable drive for. From the drop-down menu, select the drive you want to use. Join 350,000 subscribers and get a daily digest of news, comics, trivia, reviews, and more. If your Linux ISO of choice is larger than that—most aren’t—you may need a larger USB drive. The tool we’ll use to create the bootable drive from the command line is the dd command. It goes to work and doesn’t report anything until it has finished. Just select the default option—“Write in ISO Image Mode (Recommended)”—and click “OK”. Open Fedora Media Writer . Get the latest tech news and updates, programming tutorials, and cybersecurity tips and tricks. For Ubuntu, any USB drive of 4 GB capacity or greater should be fine. This is your last chance to back out without making any changes to the USB drive. 6. The Startup Disk Creator main window should now resemble the screenshot below. The contents of this drive will be erased, so back up any important files on the drive first. Step 7: Boot Selection. Prior to starting How-To Geek, Lowell spent 15 years working in IT doing consulting, cybersecurity, database management, and programming work. There should be an ISO image highlighted in the upper pane and a USB drive highlighted in the lower pane. Create a Bootable Windows 10 USB in Linux with CLI apps only. When you run it, none of your chances (like installed programs or created files) will be saved for the next time you run it. Click its icon or press Enter. Click on the Select image button and locate the distribution.iso file. Click the “Quit” button. Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys/pendrives, memory sticks, etc. The lsblk command lists the block devices on your computer. The above article may contain affiliate links, which help support How-To Geek. In reality, creating a bootable Linux USB installer is a different story, as you can not simply copy the ISO file to a USB flash drive and boot from it. Lowell is the founder and CEO of How-To Geek. PowerISO can create bootable USB drive for Linux. You now have a portable working copy of Ubuntu or another Linux distribution of your choice. In the main window, click Custom Image and select the downloaded Red Hat Enterprise Linux ISO image. This tool also tells you if the ISO file is clean or corrupted. Check your Linux distribution’s documentation—you can search for it online—for more information. Many other distributions have their own similar tools built-in, so you’ll have to check and see what your particular distribution has available. Prerequisite: Get Microsoft Windows 10 ISO and a USB of at least 8 GB in size. Same goes for bootable hard drive testing programs, password recovery tools, data wipe programs, antivirus tools, etc. It is thought as one of best, free, open-source and easy-to-use Windows 10 USB tool since it can create bootable USB for different kinds of operating systems. In the Boot Selection drop-down, select Disk Or ISO Image and then click the Select button. Provide a downloaded Ubuntu ISO file, connect a USB drive, and the tool will create a bootable Ubuntu USB drive for you. To ensure you don’t accidentally write to the wrong USB drive by mistake, we recommend removing any other connected USB drives before continuing. To be clear, this bootable USB drive will boot into a working copy of Ubuntu Linux but it will not save any changes you make. Over the last decade, Lowell has personally written more than 1000 articles which have been viewed by over 250 million people. UNetbootin doesn’t use distribution-specific rules for making your live USB drive, so most Linux ISO files should load correctly using this option. You may be told you need newer SysLinux files. If in any case you have more than one USB flash drive plugged into your laptop or computer, make sure to select the correct device that you are going to use. On the computer we used for this article, the process took about five minutes. Click the “Other” button. Activate the “Create a bootable disk using” checkbox, click the button to the right of it, and select your downloaded ISO file. Join 350,000 subscribers and get a daily digest of news, geek trivia, and our feature articles. Here we will create a Ubuntu bootable flash drive, first go to ubuntu website and download the iso file to your Linux computer. It is a portable, ISO USB maker. If you want to be able to save changes and data you need to create a bootable USB drive with persistent storage. There are many ways to create a bootable USB in Ubuntu. If this is the only ISO file present in the Downloads folder you will only see one file listed. Please follow the steps to create Linux bootable USB drive, Step1: Create Bootable USB Drive for Linux… Look, the tool is meant to create Linux Bootable USB Drive, but it can also create Windows Bootable USB. The identifier we need to use is the one representing the drive, not either of the partitions. How-To Geek is where you turn when you want experts to explain technology. (If you forgot to back up your data, click “Cancel”, back up the data on the USB drive, and then run Rufus again. Next, restart your computer and boot from the USB drive using these instructions. The command we are going to issue to dd is as follows: There is no visual feedback from dd at all as the creation progress takes place. How do I make an ISO into a bootable USB? Go to “USB Device” and select your USB flash drive (if ROSA ImageWriter doesn’t do it automatically). Step1: Create Bootable USB Drive. UNetbootin is another best Bootable USB Creator that you can use right now. There are no “Are you sure” questions or chances for backing out. Method 3. Just click the “Yes” button and Rufus will automatically download them for you. Creating Bootable Linux USB Drive using Etcher is a relatively straightforward process, just follow the steps outlined below: Connect the USB flash drive to your system and Launch Etcher. During his career, he has worked as a freelance programmer, manager of an international software development team, an IT services project manager, and, most recently, as a Data Protection Officer. By submitting your email, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Since we launched in 2006, our articles have been read more than 1 billion times. The tool will open immediately—you don’t even have to install it. Join 350,000 subscribers and get a daily digest of news, comics, trivia, reviews, and more. The output from lsblk will show the drives currently connected to your computer. Choose the Format option on the menu. To create a bootable USB Drive of Linux Mint on Windows 10/8/7, we will download a software called Rufus. By creating an El Capitan recovery disc, you can then create an installation disc, and then access the App Store for other free installers, such as Catalina and Mojave. It supports most of the Linux distribution, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, CentOS, and so on. Join 350,000 subscribers and get a daily digest of news, geek trivia, and our feature articles. There are two ways to do this: Some Linux distributions include a graphical USB startup disk creator tool that will do it for you. Plug in the USB drive you will be using to create bootable media. Insert the USB drive you intend to boot from. Connect a USB drive with at least 2GB of free space to your Windows PC (this may vary depending on your distribution of choice). A confirmation message appears to let you know when the creation of the bootable USB drive has completely finished. The default Ubuntu installation includes an application called Startup Disk Creator, which we shall use to create our bootable USB drive. In “Create Bootable USB Drive” dialog, click “” button to open the iso file of Windows operating system. Below, we’ll show you how to turn this ISO into a bootable flash drive on both Windows or an existing Linux system. A progress bar shows you how close the creation process is to completion. Head to Ubuntu’s download page and download the version of Ubuntu you want—either the stable “Long Term Service” release or the current release. You can then setup or run Linux from the USB drive. Select “Disk or ISO image” as pre-selected Dave is a Linux evangelist and open source advocate. UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions without burning a CD. To select the Ubuntu ISO file you downloaded previously, click the SELECT to the right of “Boot selection”. In a terminal window type the following command. $ wget http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/focal/daily-live/current/focal-desktop-amd64.iso Create Bootable USB from iso; Conclusion of the Article: With the above method, you can able to create a Bootable USB from ISO using Rufus on Windows 10. There is one internal hard drive on this machine called sda and there is one partition on it called sda1. Creating a bootable USB drive is a better solution—it’ll work on most computers and will boot, run, and install faster. When you are ready to install Ubuntu, you can use the USB drive as the installation medium. dd just goes right ahead and carries out the instructions you’ve given it. Create An ISO From A Bootable USB Drive Using dd Tool dd is a commonly used command-line tool for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, used to convert and copy files. To create a bootable media using an existing Windows 10 ISO file, connect a USB flash drive of at least 8GB of space, and use these steps: Open Rufus download page . /dev/sdc) with your own. Create the Linux Mint USB Drive Format a USB Drive Prepare the drive to accept the ISO-to-USB Linux transfer. A bootable USB drive is the best way to install or try Linux. You’ll be warned that all data on the USB drive will be erased. Start PowerISO (v6.5 or newer version, download here). Step 2: Properly format the USB for creating bootable Windows USB. The other partition is called sdb5 and is 14.6 GB in size. We need to know what device your USB drive is associated with. The output from lsblk will have changed. Creating a Bootable Windows 10 USB in Linux. Browse to the location of your Ubuntu ISO file, highlight it and click the “Open” button. First you need to install a tool called ms-sys. For example, you could run this command instead to see the status: When the bootable USB drive has been created dd reports the amount of data that was written to the USB drive, the elapsed time in seconds and the average data transfer rate. Confirm to yourself that the ISO image and the USB drive are correct. While you don’t technically “burn” the ISO file to a USB drive, there’s a special process required to take a Linux ISO file and make a bootable USB drive with it. While we’re using Ubuntu as an example here, this will work similarly with other Linux distributions. 6. From Linux you can read and write Apple-compatible HFS+ disk images. To do so, press the Super key (that’s the Windows key on most keyboards) and type “startup disk.” The Startup Disk Creator icon will appear. Select the appropriate ISO file and click on Open. Each drive has a block device associated with it. If the “Create a bootable disk using” option is grayed out, click the “File System” box and select “FAT32”. With the ROSA ImageWriter application open on your Linux desktop, go ahead and download the ISO file of the Linux OS you plan to create a bootable USB with. Unplug it from the Linux computer. Click the “Make Startup Disk” button when you are happy to proceed. The above article may contain affiliate links, which help support How-To Geek. The USB drive will now be listed in the output. It will be pristine every time you boot it, and you can boot it on practically any PC you like. The USB device will be highlighted in the lower pane. How to Burn an ISO File to a USB Drive in Linux, we recommend Rufus for creating a live USB drive the easy way, How to Respond Directly to a Specific Message in Instagram, How to Add, Edit, or Delete Saved Passwords in Microsoft Edge, How to Quickly Clear All Notifications on Mac, How to Disable Friend Requests on a Nintendo Switch, © 2020 LifeSavvy Media. So, in the context of the same here are some best free or opensource software to create the bootable USB. Just insert the resulting USB drive into any computer and boot from the USB device. It allows you to try out the popular Unix-like operating system without making changes to the computer. You will require an Ubuntu installation ISO image to create the bootable USB drive, so make sure you have downloaded the version of Ubuntu you wish to use. A bootable USB drive provides the same experience to the user as an Ubuntu Live DVD. Plug in your USB drive and use the lsblk command once more. If you have chosen the wrong device or ISO, click other to change your selection. Once you’ve selected the correct options, click the “Start” button to begin creating the bootable drive. Regardless of how it is named on your computer, the device that was not in the previous lsblk listing must be the USB drive. You may be told you need newer SysLinux files. For Windows users, we recommend Rufus for creating a live USB drive the easy way. Activate the “Create a bootable disk using” checkbox, click the button to the right of it, and select your downloaded ISO file. Since we launched in 2006, our articles have been read more than 1 billion times. Click the “Device” box in Rufus and ensure your connected drive is selected. Plus, there is no built-in tool for making this possible on Windows. It can be especially useful for cases where: you need to create USB installation media from bootable ISOs (Windows, Linux, UEFI, etc.) Or you can download iso file from the command line using wget or curl command. I personally use Rufus to create bootable USB from ISO on a Windows environment.But currently Rufus can be installed only on Windows environment and not on Linux nodes. One partition is called sdb1 and is 1 KB in size. You’ll need to download an ISO file to do this—we’re going to use Ubuntu in our example, but this should work for quite a few different Linux distributions. Once the process is completed, click on Close and now, the bootable USB has been created. Whichever method you choose, you’ll need the Linux distribution’s ISO file. For example, if you've put a memory testing program on a flash drive, you can now boot from that flash drive and test your RAM with it. ), RELATED: How to Boot Your Computer From a Disc or USB Drive. There is a new entry in the list, called sdb and it has two partitions on it. To be clear, this bootable USB drive will boot into a working copy of Ubuntu Linux but it will not save any changes you make. NOTE: This process creates a traditional live USB drive. Alternatively, we also have tutorials to help you create a bootable USB stick from both Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS . Find out the name of your USB drive with the lsblk command: How-To Geek is where you turn when you want experts to explain technology. For example, Ubuntu Linux has two built-in methods for creating a bootable USB drive. We will create a bootable USB stick with Linux by starting from a Linux distribution’s ISO. Update: In recent versions, dd now has a status=progress option that provides updates on the process once per second. By submitting your email, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Process Started; You can now find the USB converted to the Bootable USB. Step 1: Download and install UNetbootin, and launch the application. You will require an Ubuntu installation ISO image to create the bootable USB drive, so make sure you have downloaded the version of Ubuntu you wish to use. RELATED: How to Create a Live Ubuntu USB Drive With Persistent Storage. Rufus will create the bootable USB drive. Each time you boot into the Ubuntu from this USB drive it will be a fresh instance of Ubuntu. A warning appears to remind you that the USB drive will be completely wiped. You can also install a Linux distribution on your PC from it—no CD or DVD drive required. You can now either reboot your computer and boot from the USB drive or unplug the USB drive, take it to another computer, and boot it there. Creating a bootable Ubuntu USB stick is very simple, especially from Ubuntu itself, and we’re going to cover the process in the next few steps. It is a Linux cli app for writing Microsoft compatible boot records. In this article I will share 5 different tools which you can use to burn ISO to USB drive with examples. To create an ISO image from a Bootable USB Drive files, first you need to insert your USB drive and then find the device name of your USB using following df command. But most Linux distributions—like Ubuntu—only offer an ISO disc image file for download. Create An ISO From A Bootable USB Drive Using dd command Alternatively, use "dd" command to create ISO image of the USB drive using the following command: $ sudo dd if=/dev/sdc of=bootableusb.iso Replace the USB drive letter (i.e. All Rights Reserved. You can check the bootable USB drive works by rebooting your computer and booting from the USB drive, or you can try booting from it in another computer. That way you know for sure what device identity to pass to dd on the command line. Choose the menu “Tools > Create Bootable USB Drive”. The Startup Disk Creator’s main window will appear. Creating Bootable CentOS 7 USB Stick on Linux is a quick and easy process, just follow the steps detailed below. Like a live CD or DVD, a bootable USB drive lets you run practically any Linux distribution without affecting your computer. So we need to be very careful that what we tell it to do is definitely what we want it to do. Once created a bootable Windows 10 USB. How to create a bootable MacOS USB. With UNetbootin you can create bootable disks for Ubuntu, Fedora and other Linux distributions easily. In this article, we will be seeking the help of the Etcher utility to burn a USB stick with an ISO image of the Ubuntu package. Then, click on the button next to “Image” to select the ISO file. The ISO requires a special EFI bootloader. As the name suggests, it is used to create only a Linux bootable drive. Open Windows Explorer, and right-click the drive letter assigned to the drive. This will download iso file to the current directory. That’s a more complicated process. If you’re already using Ubuntu, you don’t need to do this from Windows. Warning: This command must be used very carefully. UNetbootin is another tool that allows you to create bootable USB drives as it either downloads the ISO file or you can provide the downloaded ISO file to create a bootable disk easily. Click “OK” to continue if the drive has no important data on it. When you are sure that the correct USB drive is the only one connected to your computer, launch Startup Disk Creator. A standard file open dialog will appear. To create bootable USB from ISO, some of you may choose to use USB bootable software like Rufus. You can download Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft’s website. If only one USB drive is attached to your machine, Etcher will automatically select it. If you’re not sure which one to download, we recommend the LTS release. If you’re using another Linux distribution, it may include a similar utility. Whether you’re using Windows or a Mac, we’ll walk you through the process step-by-step. After getting it … Linux Live USB Creator (LiLi) This is an open source and free software to create a Live USB drive. Rufus will ask how you want to write the image. Here is the link for that. Since we want to create a USB stick that will be able to boot a UEFI system, we will require an ISO that can do this. You’ll need a third-party tool to turn that ISO file into a bootable USB drive. You can also use the dd command to do this from a terminal on any Linux distro. You can click “Close” to close Rufus when it’s done. Some involve using the system tools, while others depend on the installation of external packages. So we must find some alternatives to Rufus to create bootable USB from ISO Linux command line or GUI. There are many tools that can do this job for you, but we recommend a free program called Rufus—it’s faster and more reliable than many of the other tools you’ll see recommended, including UNetbootin. You can always format a USB drive and use it again for storing data. The great thing about UNetbootin is that it can create a Linux bootable USB as well. Just open the Dash and search for the  “Startup Disk Creator” application, which is included with Ubuntu. Boot from USB and install Windows 10 enterprise client. And start the flashing process to burn the file of the OS from the computer to your USB drive to produce a Bootable USB. You can also take it to another computer and boot Ubuntu from the USB drive on that computer. For installing Linux to your PC, this is fine—but if you want a live USB that keeps your changes so you can use it regularly on different computers, you’ll want to check out these instructions instead.