Create bootable images with dd

• #100DaysToOffload
• #linux
• #tech
• #tutorial

17th Oct 2024 | ~1 minute read

The most popular choices for creating bootable USBs are probably Rufus (on Windows) or something like etcher (cross platform).

If you are like me, you probably use ventoy (which, btw is too awesome, and probably the easiest way to create Windows bootable drives using linux), but some distros just don't boot with ventoy. So instead of installing a heavy and slow electron app like etcher, I recently realized that the dd command is a pretty good choice.

It does get a lot of "hate" and gets called the "disk destroyer" command but it's acutally pretty awesome if used carefully. Here's how I flash an ISO:

sudo dd if=<input iso>.iso of=/dev/sdx status=progress

(note that you need to replace /dev/sdx with your flash drive and <input iso> with your iso; this WILL delete all the data)

This is pretty awesome because chances are you probably already have dd on your system. Please do note that dd can cause data loss if not used carefully, so don't come to me crying lol

This is post 12 of #100DaysToOffload