Live usb creator from linux

10 Useful Tools to Create Bootable USB from an ISO Image

CD and DVD writers are a thing of the past. You are not likely to find them in modern-day laptops. If your goal is to create a bootable medium, then creating a bootable USB drive from an ISO file remains your best option.

There are quite a number of tools that can help you create a bootable USB drive. Some will even go further and let you create a multi-boot USB drive where you get to choose the OS that you want to install.

Here are some of the widely-used utilities for creating a bootable USB drive from an ISO file in Linux desktop systems.

1. Rufus

We start off our list with Rufus which is arguably one of the most popular bootable USB creation utilities. It’s a free tool that you can download and create bootable USB pen drives, memory sticks, etc. It is particularly helpful when you want to create a USB installation medium from an ISO image or work on a system with no OS installed.

Rufus is a portable utility that comes with a small footprint – 1.3MB only. No installation is required. You just need to double-click on the executable file to launch the UI and start creating your USB bootable medium from an ISO image of your choice (both Windows and Linux).

Unfortunately, Rufus is only supported on Windows and the developer has not yet ported it to Linux as yet. If you are looking for an alternative that works on Linux, read on.

2. UNetbootin

UNetbootin is a free and cross-platform utility for creating live bootable USB drives using an ISO image from all the major Linux distributions, even the lesser-known ones such as Tails, and AntiX.

It doesn’t employ distribution-specific rules for creating bootable USB drives, and therefore, most of the Linux ISO images should load without a problem.

Apart from creating a Live bootable medium, you get other system repair tools and utilities for example:

• Parted Magic
• SystemRescueCD
• Smart Boot Manager
• Dr.Web AntivirusF-Secure Rescue CD
• Super Grub Disk
• Backtrack
• Ophcrack

3. Balena Etcher

Developed & Maintained by the Balena team, Balena Etcher is a free and open source for writing image files such as .img and .iso onto USB drives and creating Live bootable pen drives and SD cards.

Etcher is a cross-platform tool and is available for download on Windows, macOS, and Linux (both 32-bit and 64-bit). It provides a very elegant yet simple UI that provides a smooth experience while writing your image files.

4. Ventoy

Ventoy is yet another utility that lets you not only create an ordinary USB bootable medium but also allows you to create a multiboot USB drive with several OS options.

In fact, Ventoy takes away the need to format your USB drive over and over again. Simply copy the ISO file to your Pendrive drive and boot it. You can copy multiple ISO files concurrently and Ventoy will provide a boot menu to select your preferred image to boot from. Ventoy supports over 420 ISO files.

• Cross-platform (Windows, Linux).
• Support for both Legacy and UEFI BIOS modes.
• Support for ISO images larger than 4GB.
• MBR and GPT partition style supported (1.0.15+).
• USB drive write-protected support.
• You can directly boot from ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files. No extraction is required.

And many more. Check out Ventoy’s additional features.

5. Universal USB Installer

Abbreviated as UUI, Universal USB Installer is a Live Linux Bootable USB Creator Software that allows you to easily create a bootable USB from your favorite Linux distribution or Windows installer. It runs only on the Windows operating system.

In addition to that, you also get additional tools such as USB Boot Rescue tools such as Comodo and BitDefender Rescue CD, and bootable software such as Hirens Boot CD.

6. Yumi

Yumi – short for ‘Your Universal Multiboot Installer’ – is another tool that you can leverage to create a multiboot USB drive. It’s the predecessor of the Universal USB installer and allows you to create a Multiboot USB Flash Drive containing multiple ISO files on the fly and start using it to boot your preferred Live Linux OS.

Key features of Yumi USB creator include:

• Runs only on the Windows operating system.
• An option to reformat your USB drive.
• Support for both Legacy and UEFI BIOS modes.
• Affinity for Ubuntu-derived Distributions.
• Download links to make it easy to get the related ISO files.
• A website link to help you learn more about the YUMI.
• A feature to remove installed items on the USB drive to facilitate cleanup.

7. PowerISO

PowerISO is a robust and fully-featured application for burning CDs/DVDs. In addition, It allows you to extract, burn, create, encrypt, compress, and convert ISO images and mount them on an external drive.

It provides an all-in-one solution allowing you to do whatever you want with your files.

At a glance, PowerISO allows you to:

• Supports Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• Create a bootable USB drive from an ISO image.
• Create bootable ISO files and create bootable CDs and DVDs.
• Open and extract ISO files with a single click.
• Rip multimedia files including audio files such as MP3, WMA FLAC.
• Burn audio files from MP3, and WMA FLAC to CDs / DVDs.
• Ability to edit ISO files directly.
• Create ISO or BIN files from CDs / DVDs.

8. GNOME Multiwriter

GNOME Multi-writer is a utility for Linux systems that is used to write an ISO file to multiple USB devices at a go.

It supports USB drives of up to 32GB in size. It was originally written as part of the ColorHug project, but later on, shifted direction and became an independent application in 2015.

9. MultiBootUSB

MultiBootUSB is a free and open-source cross-platform tool that also allows users to install multiple Live Linux distributions on a USB drive and boot from it. It provides a simple and user-friendly UI that enhances the seamless creation of the bootable USB drive.

• Supports Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• Automatic detection of ISO files.
• Works on both USB and external hard drives.
• Preservation of files on the USB drive without deletion.
• Installed images can be uninstalled without affecting other files in the drive.
• Ability to install multiple distributions at a time on the command line.
• The list of supported distributions is constantly updating.

10. ImageUSB Writer

Last on the list is the ImageUSB Writer. Just like GNOME multi-writer and multi-boot USB, this is a free utility for Windows systems only that allows you to write an ISO file concurrently to several USB devices. It also supports direct imaging between the devices.

ImageUSB writer is also a perfect tool for mass duplication of USB flash drives. The application is also capable of reformatting a USB device, as well as MBR and GPT entries for wider disk space.

That was a roundup of some of the utilities that you can leverage to create a bootable USB drive from an ISO image in Linux. We have compiled tools that work on both Linux and Windows in case you are working on either system. That is all for now. Your feedback is highly welcome.

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Best Linux Apps for Creating Bootable Live USB Drive

This article will list some useful Linux applications that will allow you to create bootable live USB drives by extracting or transferring ISO image files of various Linux distributions. Live mode allows users to run and experience a full Linux desktop along with all of its applications without actually installing the OS. You can also create persistent live bootable USB drives that will allow you to permanently store changes made in a live session. Creating persistent storage for live mode won’t be covered in this article as it is a complex and lengthy topic that needs to be covered in a separate article.

Startup Disk Creator

Startup Disk Creator, as the name suggests, is an application for creating “startup disks” or “bootable disks” that can be run in live mode. This application ships by default in Ubuntu and some of its variants. The process for creating a new bootable drive using Startup Disk Creator is pretty straight forward: you have to launch the application, select the ISO image, select the USB drive and then have to click on the “Make Startup Disk” button. The process may take some to finish, depending on the read / write speeds of the external drive and size of the ISO image. Note that all data on the external drive will be wiped out during creation of the bootable drive.

In case Startup Disk Creator is not installed by default on your Ubuntu system, you can install it by running the command mentioned below:

If you are using Kubuntu or other Ubuntu derivatives using KDE as the default desktop environment, you can use the KDE variant instead:

Etcher

Etcher or balenaEtcher is a cross platform and open source application that can be used to flash ISO images of various Linux distributions. Created using technologies like Electron and TypeScript, Etcher can verify contents of external drives after flashing to ensure that these drives work properly on the next boot. Etcher features a minimalistic interface without much clutter.

You can download the Etcher “AppImage” executable file that can be used on all major Linux distributions from here. Other installable packages are also available on the same page.

UNetbootin

UNetbootin is an open source software that allows you to create bootable external drives from ISO images of various Linux distributions. It can also download ISO images directly from the application itself. UNetbootin uses a different approach than other applications mentioned in this article. It extracts the contents of the ISO image to external drives along with some other files needed to make these USB drives bootable. This method is especially useful if you want to copy some files to a USB drive once it has been made bootable. Other apps mentioned in the article may make “read-only” drives from ISO images of certain Linux distributions (Ubuntu for example).

You can download the UNetbootin executable binary that can be used on all Linux distributions from here.

Run the following commands to launch UNetbootin:

Note that UNetbootin shows an option to reserve space for persistent storage, but it didn’t work in my testing.

DD Command

DD command can copy and convert files on Linux systems. You can use it to transfer files on any connected storage drive, internal or external. DD command is commonly used to copy ISO image files and create bootable USB disks. DD command is available by default on all major Linux distributions.

To create a bootable live USB disk by using DD command, first you have to find out the identifier for your external drive. You can do so by running the command below:

Once you have the identifier for your external drive, run the command below by replacing “/dev/sdX” with the identifier you found in the step above (also change the path to ISO image file). Be extra careful when supplying the identifier, you don’t want to wipe out a wrong storage drive.

Wait for the process to finish, then safely remove the drive from the file manager.

Conclusion

These are some of the tried and tested methods to reliably create bootable live USB drives. These methods do not create persistent drives where all changes made in a live session are stored and saved just like on a full installation. Creating persistent drive is a bit complex process and a separate topic altogether.

About the author

Nitesh Kumar

I am a freelancer software developer and content writer who loves Linux, open source software and the free software community.

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