Making flash drive bootable 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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How to Create a Bootable Linux USB Flash Drive?

One great thing about Linux is that you can try it out without installing it on your hard drive. Most Linux distributions provide disk images (ISO files) that contain everything you need to boot into a live environment and, optionally, begin installation.

But how do you transfer a downloaded disk image to a USB flash drive? In this article, we provide three solutions to help you create a bootable Linux USB flash drive on Linux, Windows, macOS, and even Android.

Create a Bootable Linux USB with Etcher (Linux, Windows, macOS)

Written in Electron, Etcher is a cross-platform open source utility for flashing disk images to USB drives and memory cards. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux and provides an approachable graphical user interface that reduces the process of creating a bootable Linux USB to just three simple steps.

Unlike other similar software tools, Etcher prevents users from accidentally wiping their entire hard drives, which is something you’ll definitely appreciate if you’ve never created a bootable USB before and understandably feel anxious about the process.

To create a bootable Linux USB with Etcher:

1. Download Etcher from its official website.

3. Select the ISO file you want to flash to your USB drive.

4. Specify the target USB drive if the correct drive is not selected already.

5. Click the Flash! button and wait for the process to finish.

Create a Bootable Linux USB with dd (Linux, macOS)

dd is a command-line utility for Unix-like operating systems whose primary purpose is to read/write data from/to device files, such as USB flash drives. Because dd is bundled in GNU coreutils, you can find it on virtually all Linux distributions, as well as on macOS.

To create a bootable Linux USB with dd:

1. Open your favorite terminal emulator.
2. Issue the following command (replace /dev/sdx with your drive and path/to/ubuntu.iso with the actual path to the ISO file you want to flash):

The version of dd included in GNU coreutils doesn’t provide any progress indication. If you’d like some reassurance that the transfer is progressing as it should, you can use the following command (replace dd-pid with the process-id of dd, which you can find using htop):

dd for windows

There’s actually a version of dd for Windows that provides all the functionality you need to transfer an ISO file to a USB flash drive. To install it:

1. Download the latest version from its official website.
2. Extract the downloaded archive to a new folder on your hard drive.
3. Open Command Prompt and navigate to the folder with dd for Windows.
4. Use dd for Windows just like you would the version included in GNU coreutils.

Unfortunately, dd for Windows was last updated in 2010, and many users have reported issues when using the utility in Windows 10. Considering that dd for Windows doesn’t even support data conversion, such as byte order swapping and conversion to and from the ASCII and EBCDIC text encodings, you’re probably better off using either Etcher or Rufus, which we describe in the next chapter.

Create a Bootable Linux USB with Rufus (Windows)

Before the release of Etcher in 2016, Rufus was the best way to create a bootable Linux USB in Windows. This bootable USB flash drive creator is much faster than all of its Windows competitors, and it can create live USB drives for systems with both BIOS and UEFI. Rufus has been translated into several dozen languages, and it’s compatible with Windows 7 and newer, both 32- and 64-bit.

To create a bootable Linux USB with Rufus:

1. Download Rufus from its official website.
   • You can choose between an installer and a portable version.
2. Install it if you’ve downloaded the installer. Otherwise, you can just launch it.
3. Select the target USB device.
4. Click the SELECT button next to the boot selection dropdown menu and specify the ISO file you want to flash.
5. Choose the correct partition scheme for your system.
6. Click the START button.
7. Wait for Rufus to finish.

In addition to creating live Linux USB flash drives, Rufus can also flash Windows disk images.

Create a Bootable Linux USB with EtchDroid (Android)

The last utility we want to describe is called EtchDroid, and its purpose is to write OS images to USB drives on Android smartphones and tablets.

Why would you want to use your Android device to create a bootable Linux USB? Well, imagine you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and your laptop stops working after a botched system update. Without another computer to use, your only option on how to create a bootable Linux USB to fix the issue is your Android device, and that’s where EtchDroid comes in.

To create a bootable Linux USB with EtchDroid:

1. Download EtchDroid from Google Play or F-Droid.
2. Connect a USB flash drive to your Android device using a USB OTG adapter.
3. Launch EtchDroid and select the Write raw image or ISO option.
4. Select your ISO image.
5. Select the USB flash drive.
6. Tap Write to write the image to the USB flash drive.

EtchDroid has been tested with Ubuntu and its derivatives, Debian, Fedora, Arch Linux, and Raspberry PI SD card images. It doesn’t work with Windows, macOS, and old GNU/Linux distros. Support for Windows installation ISO files is on the developer’s to-do list.

About the author

David Morelo

David Morelo is a professional content writer in the technology niche, covering everything from consumer products to emerging technologies and their cross-industry application

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