Creating a Bootable USB

Document Scope

This article will discuss a basic procedure for creating a bootable Ubuntu USB drive to allow for the installation of Ubuntu on your system as well as troubleshooting using a known good image of Linux. While this guide will focus on Ubuntu for its examples, you should be able to follow this guide no matter your ISO/distribution.

Prerequisites

You will need a flash drive that is larger than the source ISO file, though a 16GB should be more than sufficient. You will also need the ability to install/run an application as an administrator on your system.

Step 1: Obtain an OS ISO file

For this example, we will be using Ubuntu Server 22.04, available from Ubuntu's website. Clicking "Download 22.04.4 LTS" will automatically default to the 64-bit version appropriate for MOST hardware. You can find other versions/architectures available to match your needs.

Step 2: Download and Install Etcher

Etcher is an application for creating bootable USB drives and you can download it from the Etcher website. Run the installer (or however applications get installed on your host OS).

Step 3: Select the ISO to load

Once the app is open you should see a window similar to the following (these examples were all captured on a Mac so your OS may be slightly different).

Click the "Flash from file" button to select the ISO file we downloaded in step one. From here you'll navigate to the folder where you saved the ISO and select it.

Step 4: Select the destination drive

Now we need to tell Etcher where to write the ISO. Click the "Select target" button and you'll be presented a list of targets detected by Etcher.

Step 5: Flash!

The final step is to click "Flash!"

Depending on the size of the drive you MAY get a warning but as long as you know the sis the correct drive, you may ignore this.

Once the process beings, you will see a purple progress bar for the actual flash process, followed by a green progress bar as Etcher verifies the new disk. Once verified, the app will notify you with a message that the flash has completed.