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Creating a bootable Ubuntu USB flash drive from Ubuntu
Install and run Startup Disk Creator alias usb-creator
The Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator is dedicated to creating USB boot drives for Ubuntu and Ubuntu family flavours (Kubuntu, Lubuntu ... Xubuntu).
- Use another tool (e.g. 'Unetbootin' or 'mkusb'), if you want to create a USB boot drive with another Linux distro (alias Linux operating system).
You can find usb-creator-gtk in the Unity Dash by typing "Startup Disk Creator" (Ubuntu Desktop) or usb-creator-kde in K-Menu-->Applications-->System-->Startup Disk Creator (Kubuntu). If it is not there, then you can install it using the Synaptic Package Manager or Ubuntu Software Center
- Insert and mount the USB drive. Inserting the USB drive should auto-mount it.
- Start the Startup Disk Creator
- In the top pane of the Startup Disk Creator, pick the .iso file that you downloaded.
- If the .iso file isn't listed, click "Other" to locate and select the .iso file that you downloaded.
- In the bottom pane of the Startup Disk Creator, pick the target device, the USB flash drive. If more than one choice, please check carefully, until you are sure that you will be writing to the correct device.
- After checking that you are pointing to the correct target device, the USB flash drive, you can start the action.
You must enter a password because this is a risky operation. Use the password of the current user ID (the same as for login and running tasks with 'sudo'.
The Startup Disk Creator clones the iso file, which means that you need neither erase nor format the target drive. It will be completely overwritten anyway by the cloning process. The Startup Disk Creator looks like this in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS:
Screenshots: Startup Disk Creator - to SSD or pendrive
Notes
NEVER try to use one of your hard disk drives or SSDs or partitions in this process unless you really know what you are doing, as data will get erased.
There are bugs that affect the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator, when you run it in old Ubuntu versions (e.g. 12.04 LTS, 14.04 LTS, 15.10) in BIOS mode and try to create USB boot drives with other versions. Some of the bugs are caused by conflicts between different versions of 'syslinux'. These bugs do not affect installing in UEFI mode, where grub2 is used. And with the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator version 0.3.2 in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, these bugs are no longer a problem, so you can install any version of the Ubuntu flavours from 16.04 LTS.
- The Startup Disk Creator is dedicated to creating USB boot drives for Ubuntu and Ubuntu family flavours (Kubuntu, Lubuntu ... Xubuntu).
- Use another tool (e.g. 'Unetbootin' or 'mkusb'), if you want to create a USB boot drive with another Linux distro.
If you want to clone from a general image file to a drive, you can use mkusb. It lets you clone to any drive that is not busy, also an internal drive, and there are very obvious warnings to prevent mistakes.
Unetbootin
- Unetbootin works in and with most Linux distros.
You can get Unetbootin for Linux via this link: unetbootin.sourceforge.net
Unetbootin should also work well in Ubuntu, when installed via the developer's ppa. (The version in the Ubuntu repositories might not be up to date and should not be used.)
https://launchpad.net/~gezakovacs/+archive/ubuntu/ppa
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gezakovacs/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install unetbootin
If you are using UEFI, there are/were problems to use Unetbootin with some Debian versions due to a bug.
Start Unetbootin, select an ISO file or a distribution to download, select a target drive (USB drive or Hard Disk), select persistence if you wish, then reboot once done. If your USB drive doesn't show up, reformat it as FAT32. Mount the FAT32 partition (for example by un-plugging and re-plugging the drive).
If you don't reboot, because you want to use the USB flash drive in another computer, unmount (eject) the FAT32 partition before unplugging it, otherwise you might corrupt the file system.
See this detailed description.
mkusb - dd image of iso file to USB device safely
If you want to clone from a general image file to a drive, you can use mkusb. It lets you clone to any drive that is not busy, also an internal drive, and there are very obvious warnings to prevent mistakes.
- mkusb can also
- run in Debian and many linux distros that are similar to Ubuntu and Debian,
- clone from iso files of most Linux distros to create USB boot drives,
- create persistent live drives of the Ubuntu family and Debian,
- restore a USB boot drive to a standard storage device.
Simple, safe, high success rate
The mkusb tool was developed to make it simpler and safer to create boot drives with the method to flash or clone an iso image or a compressed image file. It is using dd under the hood.The target is a mass storage device, often but not always a USB drive, sometimes a memory card, an internal drive or an eSATA drive.
Cloning an iso file to a mass storage device makes a boot drive, provided it is a hybrid iso file, post-processed with isohybrid. Most modern linux distros provide hybrid iso files.
The cloning method with dd has a high success rate.
mkusb is particularly good for pre-release testing and new releases, when the standard tools might not be ready (if the configuration of the booting has been changed since the previous release). |
Quick start manual and mkusb PPA
The fastest way to start making USB boot drives is to install the mkusb PPA, install and update the mkusb package like all the other program packages. See this link
https://launchpad.net/~mkusb/+archive/ubuntu/ppa
If you run standard Ubuntu, you need an extra instruction to get the repository Universe. (Kubuntu, Lubuntu ... Xubuntu have the repository Universe activated automatically.)
sudo add-apt-repository universe # only for standard Ubuntu
Otherwise the following three command lines are enough to install mkusb.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/ppa # and press Enter sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install mkusb
View or download the quick start manual http://phillw.net/isos/linux-tools/mkusb/mkUSB-quick-start-manual.pdf
mkusb - wiki page
mkusb is described with more details at the following wiki page
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb
mkusb - persistent live drives
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/persistent: mkusb-dus - classic mkusb
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/minp: mkusb-minp - method for Ubuntu 19.10+
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb/plug: mkusb-plug - very safe plug-in method to identify the target device (the USB flash drive)
How is it easier to make a persistent live drive with Ubuntu 19.10?