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Create a bootable USB stick on Ubuntu

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Creating a Bootable Ubuntu UEFI USB Drive

Creating a boot USB for UEFI is super easy. Follow this step by step guide to create your own.

Table of Contents

Before you begin there are a few things you’re going to need:

  • USB drive you don’t mind erasing (>8GB in size)
  • ISO file for the OS you want to make bootable
    • We’re going to use Ubuntu 18.04.1 for this example from Ubuntu.com, but the exact same method can be used for a Windows 7+ ISO, you just need the ISO file so you can extract the contents to your USB drive
      • Updated February 24, 2019: Creating a bootable USB for the October 2018 update for Windows 10 can no longer be accomplished using the below instructions. Please see the tutorial Creating a Bootable Windows 10 UEFI USB Drive Using Linux for updated information.

      Formatting the USB Drive

      1. Insert your USB drive, then open the “Disks” utility
      2. Choose your USB drive from the available drives on the left then click the stop button to unmount the drive
      3. Click the “gear” icon and then click Format Partition
      4. Give the volume a name. Spaces are allowed but sticking with underscores (_) and hyphens (-) will make things easier to reference from the command line. Let’s give it the name of “Ubuntu_UEFI”. Make sure the “FAT” option is chosen, then click Next

      WARNING Clicking “Apply” on the following screen WILL delete ALL data on the selected partition. Ensure the correct drive/partition is chosen as choosing the wrong drive WILL DELETE ALL DATA on that drive. You have been warned.

      Creating the UEFI Bootable USB

      Now that we have a freshly formatted FAT USB drive, we can proceed to creating the UEFI bootable USB

      1. Open a terminal window
      2. Before we copy the files to our USB stick using 7-zip (‘7z x’ command), let’s display our USB drive info and Downloads folder listing so we have an easy reference

      $ df -h | grep -i media $ ls ~/Downloads $ 7z x ~/Downloads/ubuntu-18.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso -o/media/blah/Ubuntu_UEFI/
      $ sudo apt install p7zip-full
      $ 7z x ~/Downloads/ubuntu-18.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso -o/media/blah/Ubuntu_UEFI/
      $ ls -la /media/blah/Ubuntu_UEFI/

      Congratulations, you should now have a UEFI bootable USB Drive built of a Ubuntu 18.04.1 OS : )

      If you have any questions/comments please leave them below.

      Thanks so much for reading ^‿^

      If this tutorial helped you out please consider buying me a pizza slice!

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      • Creating a Bootable Windows 10 UEFI USB Drive Using Linux

      Create a bootable USB stick on Ubuntu

      Creating a bootable Ubuntu USB stick is very simple, especially from Ubuntu itself, and we’re going to cover the process in the next few steps.

      Alternatively, we also have tutorials to help you create a bootable USB stick from both Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS.

      about 7 minutes to go
      Previous step Next step

      2. Requirements

      • A 4GB or larger USB stick/flash drive
      • Ubuntu Desktop 14.04 or later installed
      • An Ubuntu ISO file. See Get Ubuntu for download links

      about 6 minutes to go

      3. Launch Startup Disk Creator

      We’re going to use an application called ‘Startup Disk Creator’ to write the ISO image to your USB stick. This is installed by default on Ubuntu, and can be launched as follows:

      1. Insert your USB stick (select ‘Do nothing’ if prompted by Ubuntu)
      2. On Ubuntu 18.04 and later, use the bottom left icon to open ‘Show Applications’
      3. In older versions of Ubuntu, use the top left icon to open the dash
      4. Use the search field to look for Startup Disk Creator
      5. Select Startup Disk Creator from the results to launch the application

      about 0 minutes to go

      4. ISO and USB selection

      When launched, Startup Disk Creator will look for the ISO files in your Downloads folder, as well as any attached USB storage it can write to.

      It’s likely that both your Ubuntu ISO and the correct USB device will have been detected and set as ‘Source disc image’ and ‘Disk to use’ in the application window. If not, use the ‘Other’ button to locate your ISO file and select the exact USB device you want to use from the list of devices.

      Click Make Startup Disk to start the process.

      about 4 minutes to go

      5. Confirm USB device

      Before making any permanent changes, you will be asked to confirm the USB device you’ve chosen is correct. This is important because any data currently stored on this device will be destroyed.

      After confirming, the write process will start and a progress bar appears.

      about 1 minutes to go

      6. Installation complete

      That’s it! You now have Ubuntu on a USB stick, bootable and ready to go.

      If you want to install Ubuntu, take a look at our install Ubuntu desktop tutorial.

      Finding help

      If you get stuck, help is always at hand:

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