How to make bootable pendrive

A lot of linux distributions are there to choose and they releases every day. So it is difficult to choose one without testing first. You can not burn a CD or DVD every time to check the live image released of a distribution.


For Windows Users:
Well there are plenty of tools available there. If you are using windows then there is a great tool called YUMI - Multiboot USB creator. As name suggest you can make a pendrive multi-bootable with YUMI. You can download the tool from here and start testing it.

For Linux Users:
If you are using linux then most of the popular distributions are providing there own tool to make bootable pendrive.

On Fedora install liveusb-creator using

yum install liveusb-creator

and run the application. It is very interactive.

On Ubuntu run the program Startup Disk Creator which is used to create bootable pendrive.

There are a lot of other distributions and there programs. But there is one command for terminal which run on all distribution and is very easy to use.

dd command:
Open the terminal and become super user(su for Fedora or sudo before command for user more linux like Ubuntu, Mint).
Before running the command check the device partition of your USB pendrive by



ls -la /dev/disk/by-label

This command will show the label of your partitions and the disk vol. like sda1, sdb3. Your pendrive might have only one partition and there will be adb1 or adc1 only for that. Whatever it is use that sdc or sdd or sdb without the number in below command instead of sdX.
Please be carefull before using the below command. make sure you are using right partition before running command. dd is very strong command and it will destroy entire partition and write the iso file there. It will not show any warning or ask you to confirm once press enter.
 

sudo dd if=/home/user/directory/diskimage.iso of=/dev/sdX

Here dd is command, if means input file and of means output file.  

Adding removable media to be mounted at boot time

This post will show how to add your different partitions of HDD at boot time. After completing the exercise you will not need to mount the partitions evry time you login. This is a guide for beginners and I assume that you know nothing about linux commands.
You might have more then 1 HDD in your system. Linux provides name to each HDD and its partition. Like first partition in first HDD may have a label sda1. To know how to find these name there is a simple utility in latest version of almost all linux distributions that is called Disk Utility. You just need to go to you Fedora Activities or Ubuntu Dashboard and type disk or you can search it in Accessories. I assume that you are using GNOME 3. Otherwise you can go to Applications -> Accessories. After opening you can find all the media devices in your computer system. Just go to your device and click at the partition which you want to be mounted at boot time. You will see the device name at below label as Device. Below is a snapshot of Disk Utility at my PC with Fedora 16.

Here my Device label is Data and name is /dev/sdb11. Now yuo have got the Device name. Now you have to create a mount point. Simply said a folder in either /media or in /mount. For this you have to type a command

 sudo mkdir /media/DATA

 Provide root or Administrator password if asked. After that you need to open a file in /etc directory. Type the command

sudo vim /etc/fstab

You can also use gedit instead of vim. Here you will find that there are a lot of lines already presented. Need not worry just go to the end of the file and add a line there. This line will have 6 fields. First will be device name (/dev/sdb11), second is mount point (/media/DATA), third is file system type (ntfs-3g, FAT, ext4 etc), fourth is options (there are many options but for beginners I will say type defaults), dump (dump should backup file system 0 = No, 1 = Yes, set 0 for removable devices), needs checked (fsck order on reboots 0=don't check, 1=root filesystem, 2=other filesystems). For example I added the line

/dev/sdb11      /media/DATA     ntfs-3g defaults        0 0

Thats it. Now you can reboot your system and see the things are working.