3.2.2.2.2. Making Fedora USB Media with dd

⁠3.2.2.2.2. Making Fedora USB Media with dd

Warning — These instructions could destroy data

When you perform this procedure any data on the USB flash drive is destroyed with no warning. Make sure that you specify the correct USB flash drive, and make sure that this flash drive does not contain any data that you want to keep.

Note

The Fedora Project recommends using livecd-tools rather than dd for creating USB media whenever possible.

Use this method for the distribution image, the minimal boot media image, or on systems with a UNIX operating system (including Mac OX X).

Plug in your USB flash drive.
Find the flash drive's device name. If the media has a volume name, use it to look up the device name in /dev/disk/by-label, or use the findfs command:
```
findfs LABEL=MyLabel
```
If the media does not have a volume name or you do not know it, you can also use the dmesg command shortly after connecting the media to your computer. After running the command, the device name (such as sdb or sdc) should appear in several lines towards the end of the output.
Use the dd command to transfer the boot ISO image to the USB device:
```
su -c 'dd if=path/image_name.iso of=/dev/device bs=block size'
```
where path/image_name.iso is the boot ISO image file that you downloaded and device is the device name for the USB flash drive. Ensure you specify the device name (such as sdc), not the partition name (such as sdc1). The bs option specifies the block size; it can be omitted, but specifying it will speed up the process. For example:
```
su -c 'dd if=~/Downloads/Fedora-Live-Desktop-x86_64-20-1.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=512k'
```