How do I burn an ISO image to a USB flash drive?

Possible Duplicate:
Place a bootable ISO on a USB drive?

What is the best way to burn an ISO image onto a USB flash drive?

Dan

Posted 2009-12-23T22:26:17.047

Reputation: 451

I think this question is not really a duplicate. The other refers to making the USB bootable, whereas this asks for a sector-by-sector copy of any binary data. – jiggunjer – 2016-01-04T05:00:37.173

The answers on this question are better than the other one. The other question should be closed. 38k views vs 2k views. This is the question people have. – Ian Boyd – 2011-07-23T15:22:32.387

Not sure if this will help or not, but to make your ISO "bootable" on Windows: http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

– None – 2009-12-23T22:36:21.910

Could you clarify if you want it bootable or just to extract the contents? – Goyuix – 2009-12-24T03:24:01.790

Answers

For some variants of Linux, UNetbootin does this without any extra configuration or work.

Anonymous

Posted 2009-12-23T22:26:17.047

Reputation: 1 214

well, the only bad thing is, it changes some of the screens and I'm not sure if it works everywhere – phunehehe – 2009-12-24T03:52:28.373

Another option is usb-creator-gtk, which is what I used in order to install Linux on my netbook. – Zurahn – 2009-12-24T04:09:06.677

Depending on the ISO image, I recommend WinToFlash for anything Windows.

For Linux distributions, see Anonymous' answer.

Molly7244

Posted 2009-12-23T22:26:17.047

Reputation:

Chrome blocks the download. – CoderDennis – 2014-07-15T08:48:07.623

I don't see anything in WinToFlash that lets you select an ISO to use – Brad Mace – 2013-06-13T02:27:16.643

WinToFlash is completely adware ridden. I wouldn't recommend it. – Sedat Kapanoglu – 2013-08-01T07:36:37.770

3badam-PISH. I should upvote this just for the punchline ;p – Journeyman Geek – 2009-12-24T00:04:49.713

You can use the dd command to "burn" an ISO image to a USB drive from the command line:

dd if=file.iso of=/dev/sdb

Change /dev/sdb to the mount point of the USB drive.

Be careful, as this will destroy the original contents of the USB drive.

Additionally, if the ISO is bootable (such as in installer image) then the USB drive will boot the same way.

phunehehe

Posted 2009-12-23T22:26:17.047

Reputation: 777

Do you have a windows version for this? – jiggunjer – 2015-12-30T05:35:48.763

2This does only work with specially crafted ISO images. – Andreas Wiese – 2014-03-26T18:33:08.810

Use 7-Zip and just extract the contents onto the USB drive.

When extracted, you'll see the same contents you would if you browsed to the disc.

The Matt

Posted 2009-12-23T22:26:17.047

Reputation: 281

1This answer is no good. An ISO is more than just a file archive. – jiggunjer – 2016-01-04T04:57:07.757

5But will 7-zip make it boot-able? – Greg – 2009-12-23T22:28:45.403

No, probably not. You might want to put that in your question when you migrate it to Superuser. Making it bootable will require some additional steps. – The Matt – 2009-12-23T22:31:04.720

You can't really "burn" an ISO image to a USB flash drive.

If you want a bootable USB from an ISO image, there are a couple of things you need to do

Create a FAT32 partition on the USB drive (perferably, the first partition)
Mount the ISO image to access its contents
Copy the contents of the ISO image to the partition you just created.
You need the SYSLINUX utility to make it bootable

M0E-lnx

Posted 2009-12-23T22:26:17.047

Reputation:

You can "burn" an ISO to a flash drive, byte-by-byte. Maybe just not with windows ;) – jiggunjer – 2015-12-30T05:35:08.720