How to EASILY create a bootable Linux USB installation media using “dd” command?

Warning: The command discussed in this page, if used improperly could delete the entire operating system and files.

What is a bootable USB you ask? A bootable USB is a device from which you can boot your computer, i.e. it allows you to run or install an operating system through your USB. In this article, you will learn how to use the “dd” command to create a bootable USB drive to create your bootable USB for your favourite Linux distribution.

You can use a bootable USB or live USB to test out OSs like Linux Mint, Fedora, Ubuntu or any other Linux distros before installing it on your HDD or SSD. But unfortunately, you can’t just copy-paste and expect to be done with it, there is a little process to it, but don’t worry it’s almost as easy as copy-pasting the files(phew).

You can always use tools like Etcher to get this done but why would you go through such hassle when you can just quickly open the terminal and run a simple command — “dd”?

dd is a powerful tool that stands for Disk Duplicator or popularly nicknamed the “disk destroyer” (we’ll discuss that in a second), it has many utilities but here we are going to learn how to create a bootable Linux USB with it.

Let’s look at the command we will use to create a bootable drive.

dd if=isoname of=/dev/sdx status=progress

“dd” is what you will use to call the program, “if” stands for the Input File, “of” stands for the Output File, and “status” is an additional option which will display the progress of the command while it’s running — Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

Pre-requisites

1. A Linux system
2. A USB drive with 4GB minimum space (data on it would be wiped)
3. Any Linux ISO

Step by Step guide with example

Now let’s get our hands dirty and see how to practically do this.

Step 1: Inserting USB

First, insert the USB device that you want to make a bootable USB out of. It is recommended to insert only one USB drive to avoid any confusion.

Step 2: Finding USB name

Now, to find the name of the drive, enter the following command into your terminal.

lsblk

“lsblk” command

This will list all of the disks and partitions in your system, now look for the disk which has the size corresponding to your USB and note its name down, most probably it’s in the scheme, “sda”, “sdb”, “sdc”, etc. Now, this is very important because as mentioned earlier if you enter the wrong name for it, your entire disk including your OS and precious data would be wiped. Now, you know why Linux folks call it the “disk destroyer”. In the example, we have “sdb” as our name for the USB.

Step 3: Opening the folder in terminal

After that, download the ISO image of your favourite distribution and right-click on the folder where the ISO is saved and click on the option “Open in Terminal”. For this article, we have downloaded Linux mint xfce edition.

Opening in terminal

Step 4: Listing files

Now that we have the folder open in the terminal we could enter the “ls” command to list the folder content. As you could see Linux mint xfce is coming up in the output.

ls

“ls” command

Step 5: Running dd command

Now we are ready to use the dd command to create a bootable USB, finally! it’s time for some action. We are going to run dd with sudo which means “super user do” as it needs some privileges.

sudo dd if=isoname of=/dev/sdx status=progress

instead of “isoname” here you will copy and paste your ISO’s name and instead of “/dev/sdx” type in your USB’s name for eg if your USB’s name is “sdb” then type in “/dev/sdb”.

For this example, it would be something like this.

sudo dd if=linuxmint-21.1-xfce-64bit.iso of=/dev/sdb status=progress

Running the “dd” command

Now hit “enter” and you are done. Just go and get yourself a cup of tea as it will take some time to copy and paste all the files.

Once completed, eject the USB; your bootable USB is now cooked and ready for installation.

Have a safe “dd”ing.

Let me know any queries you have in the comments.