You can use a USB flash drive not only to transfer information between computers, but also to install an operating system. Creating a bootable Linux flash drive is not difficult, and in this article I will walk you through the steps how to make one for almost any distribution.
Necessary
- -usb flash with a volume of at least 2 GB;
- -computer with Windows or Linux OS;
- -iso image of the required Linux distribution.
Instructions
Step 1
The first step is to prepare a USB flash drive to install the Linux distribution installation image on it. To do this, you need to download the USB Disk Storage Format Tool. You can easily find it on the Internet. With this utility, you need to format the USB flash drive to the FAT file system (note not FAT32, but FAT) for better compatibility. The same can be done in Linux using built-in tools. On Ubuntu, this is disks or gparted (needs to be installed separately).
Step 2
Download and install the Unetbootin program. Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu and its derivatives, already have this utility in the repositories, so just install it through your package manager (Application Center, Synaptic, etc.). For Windows, the program can be downloaded from the official website
Step 3
Insert the flash drive into the usb port. Run the Unetbootin program from the menu. Please note that the program will need administrative privileges. If you have not yet downloaded the iso image of the Linux distribution, you can do this directly in the Unetbootin program. At the top of the window, select a distribution and then a version. Then, at the bottom of the window, select the usb drive and specify which media you want to install on. I recommend turning off all unnecessary flash drives during the installation procedure so as not to destroy important data. Press the "OK" button after which the image will start downloading and its subsequent installation on the flash drive. The procedure may take a long time if you have a slow Internet connection.
Step 4
If the Unetbootin menu does not contain the distribution kit you need, or you have already downloaded the image yourself, then select the "Disk Image" option at the bottom of the window. Then, by clicking on the button with three dots, find the image of the distribution. Specify the USB stick as in the previous step and click the "OK" button. Unpacking the image to a USB flash drive will start immediately. Thus, you can install almost any image on a USB flash drive. For example Live CD Drweb or Hirens Boot CD.
Step 5
When the procedure for installing an image on a USB flash drive is completed, you can boot from it and start installing Linux on a PC or diagnose using Live CD distributions.
