Quick Tip :: Format and Burn ISO to USB in Ubuntu Linux

This quick tip shows how one can burn an ISO image to an USB device on a desktop running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Linux.

For this demonstration, we are using a 16GB USB storage .

The following are the steps to wipe clean, format, and burn the Fedora Linux ISO image to the USB media using the command line:

• Removable storage is typically mounted to the directory /media. To determine the device execute the following command:

  $ df -h | grep media

  The following will be the typical output:

  Output.1

  /dev/sdd1       1.8G  1.8G     0 100% /media/polarsparc/LEXAR

  From Output.1 above, we infer the device is /dev/sdd1.

• Unmount the device by executing the following command:

  $ sudo umount /dev/sdd1

• This step is OPTIONAL.

  To securely wipe all the data from the removeable media, execute the following command:

  $ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd1 bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync

  Note this step can take a while to complete depending on the size of the removable media.

  The following will be the typical output:

  Output.2

  16001269760 bytes (16 GB, 15 GiB) copied, 1716 s, 9.3 MB/s 
  dd: error writing '/dev/sdd1': No space left on device
  3817+0 records in
  3816+0 records out
  16007561216 bytes (16 GB, 15 GiB) copied, 1718.06 s, 9.3 MB/s

• To format the removable media as a FAT32 file system with a volume label of LEXAR, execute the following command:

  $ sudo mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sdd1 -n LEXAR -v

  The following will be the typical output:

  Output.3

  mkfs.fat 4.1 (2017-01-24)
  /dev/sdd1 has 64 heads and 32 sectors per track,
  hidden sectors 0x0800;
  logical sector size is 512,
  using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 31264768 sectors;
  drive number 0x80;
  filesystem has 2 32-bit FATs and 16 sectors per cluster.
  FAT size is 15264 sectors, and provides 1952138 clusters.
  There are 32 reserved sectors.
  Volume ID is 4fa35edf, volume label LEXAR      .

• This steps assumes that one has already downloaded the Fedora Server ISO image called Fedora-Server-dvd-x86_64-31-1.9.iso (at the time of this article) to the directory $HOME/Downloads.

  To burn the Fedora Server ISO image to the USB storage, execute the following command:

  $ sudo dd bs=4M if=$HOME/Downloads/Fedora-Server-dvd-x86_64-31-1.9.iso of=/dev/sdd1 status=progress oflag=sync

  The following will be the typical output:

  Output.4

  2138046464 bytes (2.1 GB, 2.0 GiB) copied, 233 s, 9.2 MB/s 
  509+1 records in
  509+1 records out
  2138046464 bytes (2.1 GB, 2.0 GiB) copied, 233.312 s, 9.2 MB/s

• Finally, to safely remove the USB storage, execute the following command:

  $ sudo eject /dev/sdd1

© PolarSPARC