How to create a bootable USB thumb drive from an ISO installer image

Purpose

For those who wish to install a bootable ISO on to a USB thumb drive for faster installation or because your computer is not equipped with an optical drive.

Solution

Using Windows

Prerequisites

1. A bootable ISO image
2. A USB 3.0 thumb drive large enough to accommodate the ISO or larger and can be erased
3. Rufus, which facilitates the creation of bootable USB drives and can be found at:
   http://rufus.akeo.ie
   Note: Rufus is a user friendly utility which does not come with an installer. I recommend that once you’ve extracted it from the zip archive that you place it in a folder called Simple Applications that to be locate on your desktop for easy access.

Solution

1. Go to the location where you’ve installed Rufus and double-click on it
2. Plug in your USB drive to an available port and Rufus will auto detect it or select it from the Device pull-down menu
3. Click on the disk image icon next to Create a bootable disk image using
4. Navigate to the folder where your ISO image is located, click to select it and click the Open button
5. Click on the Start button to begin creating your bootable USB drive
6. If an update menu.c warning window appears click the Yes button
7. At the data warning window click the OK button
8. Once the task is complete click the Close button
9. At the File Explore window click on This PC
10. In the System Tray click on Safely Remove Hardware and select your USB drive to eject it

Using MacOS Sierra (10.12.x)

Prerequisites

1. A bootable ISO image
2. A USB 3.0 thumb drive large enough to accommodate the ISO or larger and can be erased
3. UNetbootin, which facilitates the creation of bootable USB drives and can be found at:
   http://unetbootin.github.io

Solution

1. Go to the Finder so you can properly view your desktop
2. Plug in your USB drive to an available port
3. In the Finder double-click on the icon of your USB drive and backup any data you don’t want lost
4. From the File menu select New Finder Window
5. Selecting your hard drive, navigate to Applications > Utilities and double-click on Disk Utility
6. When Disk Utility opens, on left-hand window pane you will find the Device list
7. Under the External heading select your USB device and not the Volume which follows
8. In the toolbar click on the Erase button
9. In the Scheme pull-down menu select Master Boot Record
10. In the Format pull-down menu select MS-DOS (FAT)
11. In the Name field type an eleven character alpha/numeric name (no special characters) and click the Erase button (If a failure is encountered start at step 8 and try again)
12. From the Disk Utility window select Quit Disk Utility
13. In the Finder window navigate to your UNetbootin app and double-click it to open
14. Verify that Type: USB Drive is selected
15. Verify that Drive: is properly pointed to your USB drive (usually listed as /dev/disk2s1 unless you have multiple drives)
16. Click on the radio button next to Diskimage
17. Verify that ISO is selected from the pull-down menu
18. Click on the “…” button, navigate to your ISO image, select it and click the Open button
19. Click on the OK button to begin restoring the image to your USB drive
20. When the Warning dialogue pops-up click on the Yes to All button
21. Click on the Exit button
22. From the Finder desktop eject the newly created USB boot drive by dragging it to the trash