Sep 27, 2008

'Create a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy Way :: the How-To Geek'

This is a short instruction to create a bootable USB flash drive from Ubuntu ISO LiveCD. Why? Better speed.

>>>> From the page Create a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy Way :: the How-To Geek:

Create the Bootable Flash Drive

You'll first need to download the UNetbootin software and save it somewhere useful, since there's no installation required, just double-click to run.

I chose to use an already downloaded ISO image of the Ubuntu installation cd, and then chose my flash drive, and clicked the OK button. Yes, this step is as simple as that.

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The process will extract the files from the ISO image (or download them), copy them to the flash drive and then install the bootloader. Depending on what you are installing, this really doesn't take very long.

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Once the process is completed, you'll be prompted to reboot… which you don't necessarily have to do unless you want to test booting the flash drive on the same machine you are using.

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Otherwise you can hit the Exit button.

Make Sure the Partition is Active

If you get a boot device error when you try and boot from the flash device, it could be that your partition is not marked as active. What we'll do is use the command line diskpart utility to fix this… if you are in Vista open an administrator mode command prompt by right-clicking and choosing Run as Administrator.

Now you'll need to run this command to figure out the number of your flash drive:

list disk

This will show you the list of drives, and you will use the disk number in the "select disk" command:

select disk 1

select partition 1

active

The "active" command will actually mark the current partition as active, which is why you need to select the disk and then the partition. At this point you should be done.

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