Create Bootable USB from ISO – Terminal Guide

arch linuxbootableddisomanjaro

How can I create a bootable USB stick from an iso image?

I thought dd should do the work, but so far I were unsuccesful.

This is what I've tried:

  1. umount /dev/sdx
  2. deleted every partition on sdx with Gparted
  3. dd if=/path/to/iso/some_file.iso of=/dev/sdx bs=1024K

The file is a bootable BIOS update utility, but since my laptop does not have a CD/DVD drive I want to deploy this image on a USB stick.

However, when I have a look at sdx in Gparted, it tells me that it's size is 0 and no partitions have been created, although dd claims it has written 26MB to /dev/sdx.

I also tried to create a FAT32 partition (full size) with Gparted and then let dd copy onto this partition: dd if=/path/to/iso/some_file.iso of=/dev/sdx1. Did not work either.

The USB Stick is ok, I can write and exchange data between my laptop and computer with it. (Actually it is the same USB stick that I used to install Manjaro on my laptop before)

What am I doing wrong?

Best Answer

Using gparted remove the existing partitions from your usb, and fix the msdos partition table (by going to the device menu and selecting "create partition Table"). Then, create a new partition fat32 by right clicking on the unallocated space and selecting new, making a primary FAT32 partition.

Next step create your bootable usb:

dd if=/path_to_iso_without_space.iso of=/dev/sdx
sync

You can add the bs=4M option to make it faster:

dd bs=4M if=/path_to_iso.iso of=/dev/sdx

Example: if your device is sdb1 you should type sdb

dd if=/path_to_iso_without_space.iso of=/dev/sdb
Related Question