Rufus for Ubuntu

Using dd is the simplest method in Linux.


Where /dev/sdx is your pendrive eg. /dev/sdb

If that doesn't work for some reason, use Etcher

dd is sometimes jokingly called "disk destroyer". There is a reason for that, improper use of it will literally destroy your disk.

Ensure that the correct drive (USB drive) is specified in place of /dev/sdx, choosing the wrong drive could destroy that drive.

I never had the guts to use command line command (dd in this case) to format any USB, in fear that it may mess up the drive.
I would rather use windows to create bootable drives.

What about default USB Image writer that comes with Linux? (It comes default with Mint).

Vyom said:

What about default USB Image writer that comes with Linux?

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Is there one ? i see that there is a startup disc creator.

Desmond David said:

improper use of it will literally destroy your disk.

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Thanks for the warning. I got Etcher. Got 19.10 bootable. But when I try to format it in Ubuntu it is all trouble. It was showing one USB as 2 mountable drives. Formatting through Nautilus has no effect. It says there is a partition table and then showed some error.

Finally, I use GParted to fix it. Formatting went fine when I used Gparted.

What type of bootable medium you plan to create? BIOS MBR (Legacy Boot) or UEFI Boot?
If UEFI Boot and the ISO is UEFI bootable (which should be the case with newer Linux or Acronis etc) then it’s lot easier.
Using built-in GUI tool called ‘Disks’ create GPT partition scheme and create a FAT partition on the pen drive. Mount the ISO (Right click for options, ‘Open with Achieve Mounter’ in Ubuntu) and copy all of its contents from the Mounted ISO to the FAT partition. That’s it.

UEFI Specs make it a lot easier to boot off USB drives. The firmware (64 Bit) looks for \EFI\Boot\Bootx64.efi file when pointed to pen drive and starts loading it by default. As long as it’s designed as a valid bootloader, booting will proceed.
This method of copying or using Image Writer tools will work for most UEFI bootable ISOs where no single file inside is > 4 GB. However, for newer Windows 10 Releases this method will not work as single file install.wim is > 4 GB. Creating a single NTFS partition may or may not work as not all UEFI firmware’s support NTFS booting.

In that case you have to either split the file or use NTFS UEFI Driver. If interested, I can share the steps, however it needs to be carefully done, it’s not a single command operation.

Thanks. Looks like Etcher is working fine for now. I mostly want to use with Ubuntu and other distros, Windows and WinPE based discs as bootable USB. I am not sure how the ISO will be packed as there will be a variety of them.

meetdilip said:

2 mountable drives

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That is expected IIRC. I have a Manjaro bootable pen drive and it also shows two partitions on the boot screen. However, in this case, one is for UEFI boot and one for legacy boot.

Yes, I did see both legacy and UEFI while selecting boot options. Any idea how we can use Nautilus to format a drive in such a format ? Thanks.

meetdilip said:

Yes, I did see both legacy and UEFI while selecting boot options. Any idea how we can use Nautilus to format a drive in such a format ? Thanks.

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Haven't really tried formatting from any GUI application. Fastest way IMO is to use the mkfs commands.

For example:


For formatting a partition to FAT. Above, x is device and n is partition number. These can be obtained using "fdisk -l"

Similarly there are mkfs.ntfs and mkfs.ext4 for NTFS and ext4 respectively, and many more.

Sent from my GM1911 using Tapatalk

meetdilip said:

Yes, I did see both legacy and UEFI while selecting boot options. Any idea how we can use Nautilus to format a drive in such a format ? Thanks.

Click to expand...

if you're having trouble formatting it, it might be due to some ISO filesystem signature than needs to be removed
then you can repartition and reformat as you desire using fdisk