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How do I have to format the drive in order to create a bootable USB?

I'd appreciate it if I could get an answer soon... Thanks!

Gon Nespral
  • 21

4 Answers4

1

To the best of my knowledge, it does not matter how you format (i.e. choice of filesystem) your pendrive. If your aim is to make a bootable pendrive with e.g. Unetbootin it is probably the best to format in VFAT. Given that the pendrive is plugged into the computer and mounted (i.e. you can browse its content) you can proceed as follows from the terminal:

Identify the device name /dev/sd* of the pendrive (from its size and/or mounting point) by typing

df -h

which will produce a list of all partitions currently mounted in Linux. Let us say that your device is called "/dev/sdc1". Unmount the pendrive by typing 

umount /dev/sdc1

this will unplugg it from Linux (do not remove the pendrive physically). To format the pendrive you simply have to type

sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc1

which will erase your pendrive and create a new empty VFAT filesystem. (Check that you selected the correct device name before formating.) Now you can toggle the disk as bootable with the cfdisk utility. Type

sudo cfdisk /dev/sdc

and select the 'sdc1' partition graphically and toggle it as bootable. Write the changes to the disk. Voila!

Anders
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0

It should not matter. You can use Startup Disk Creator which is pre-installed in Ubuntu.

Ron
  • 20,938
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You can use Your Universal Multiboot Integrator.

ike
  • 1,260
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In case you're trying to create a bootable Live USB drive using a specific Ubuntu version, the most straightforward way to do it in my opinion is to just write the whole image to the drive:

sudo dd if=<path_to_image_to_read> of=<path_to_device_file_to_write>

*<path_to_image_to_read> = path to the Ubuntu image; <path_to_device_file_to_write> = path to the USB drive's device file as reported by lsblk ;

kos
  • 41,268