Installing an ISO to a USB stick
I am working from Linux, please submit a pull request to add instructions for Windows/Mac
First thing is first, download the iso you want to use as a live disk.
To install to a usb stick, you run sudo dd if=/location/of/the.iso of=/dev/X, where x is the USB stick. To find the device you want to install, before inserting the stick run [sudo] fdisk -l. You should be given the following:
→ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 119.2 GiB, 128035676160 bytes, 250069680 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 58593279 58591232 28G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda2 58593280 58597375 4096 2M BIOS boot
/dev/sda3 74217472 250068991 175851520 83.9G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda4 58597376 74217471 15620096 7.5G Linux swap
Partition table entries are not in disk order.
You are looking for the line Disk /dev/xxx: x.xGiB .... Take note of what is already there…
Now, insert your USB stick and run [sudo] fdisk -l again and you should get an extra addition. In my example above, I originally had /dev/sda which is my laptop HDD. After inserting the disk (below), I now have /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. I now havesdb which is my USB stick.
→ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 119.2 GiB, 128035676160 bytes, 250069680 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 58593279 58591232 28G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda2 58593280 58597375 4096 2M BIOS boot
/dev/sda3 74217472 250068991 175851520 83.9G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda4 58597376 74217471 15620096 7.5G Linux swap
Partition table entries are not in disk order.
Disk /dev/sdb: 29.8 GiB, 32010928128 bytes, 62521344 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 62519295 62517248 29.8G Linux filesystem
I can now install my ISO to my usb stick via [sudo] dd if=/home/<username>/Downloads/some-live-disk.iso of=/dev/sdb.
→ sudo dd if=/home/nigel/Downloads/rancheros.iso of=/dev/sdb
83968+0 records in
83968+0 records out
42991616 bytes (43 MB) copied, 9.68235 s, 4.4 MB/s
You can now see above that the ISO has been copied above. You should now be able to insert onto you server/laptop/desktop and boot directly for that USB stick. Great for testing a new Linux distrubution outside of a virtual machine.
$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 298.1 GiB, 320072933376 bytes, 625142448 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x5bbb7b73
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 * 2048 625142447 625140400 298.1G 83 Linux
Above, it shows I have a disk that is /dev/sda. I now want to delete this partition. There are two ways of doing this; via command line or a graphical display.
To do via a graphical display, simply create a live CD/DVD/USB linux disc (think Ubuntu/ElementaryOS live disc) and fire up GParted and format the disk.
To do via the command line, I use fdisk.
$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda