Creating a Bootable Flash Drive

While preparing to dual boot your laptop with more than one operating system the one step that will keep repeating itself is creating a bootable flash drive. Most laptops don’t support disk drives that’s why the flash drive is the preferred installation media these days. Most of us find it difficult but, creating a flash drive is as easy as saving a pdf file on your pc. The key ingredients are a flash drive, an ISO image of the OS, Unetbootin. You can also use Rufus for windows but we choose Unetbootin as it is available on all platforms Linux, mac, windows.

Steps To Follow

• First download Unetbootin from this link.
• On the website click the arrow on the download button to select your operating system
• Now install unetbootin and insert a flash drive.
• Now open unetbootin and select DiskImage at bottom and browse the ISO with the right most button.
• Select your USB Drive and Hit ok.
• Make sure selections are in accordance with the screenshot below.

Extra Steps for Mac Users

• Launch Dish Utility App
• Insert the flash drive and observe the flash drive in the left menu in the disk utility
• Select the disk from the left sidebar and click on erase in the toolbar or right-click and select erase
• Set the configurations as in the below image and hit erase.

Sometimes macOS blocks third-party installs. In that case, you need to visit preference -> Security & Privacy -> General Tab. At the bottom, you will see unetbootin is blocked. Click on open anyway enter the password and you are good to go.

Where to download ISO images to flash?

• Ubuntu: Click Here
• Windows: Click Here
• macOS: Click Here

I try to keep things short to save your time. But, if you have any queries in any step feel free to comment below the average reply time: 5min – 1hr. In the next episode, we will discuss The BIOS Theorem