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How to create a bootable USB on any operating system with Etcher.io

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Etcher.io usage

Almost every operating system installation starts with one step: creating a bootable medium. This medium, usually a USB drive is then used to boot the operating system installer and install the operating system. Today we’re going to take a look at Etcher.io a free, open source and cross-platform software to create bootable drives.

Important
I take absolutely NO responsibility of what you do with your machine; use this tutorial as a guide and remember you can possibly cause data loss if you touch things carelessly.

Installation

WindowsmacOS > 10.9DebianUbuntuLinux MintFedoraCentOSArch LinuxOther Linux

If you use chocolatey:

choco install etcher

Otherwise you can head over the official website to download the software.

If you use brew:

brew cask install etcher

Or you can head over the official website to download the software.

This procedure is fine for every Debian-based distribution such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

$ echo "deb https://dl.bintray.com/resin-io/debian stable etcher" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/etcher.list
$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 379CE192D401AB61
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install etcher-electron

See instructions for Debian.

See instructions for Debian.

You can use this procedure for every Red Hat-based distribution such as CentOS and RHEL. Keep in mind installing third-party software on RHEL systems may invalidate the support SLA.

$ sudo curl https://bintray.com/resin-io/redhat/rpm -o /etc/yum.repos.d/bintray-resin-io-redhat.repo
$ sudo yum install -y etcher-electron

See instructions for Fedora.

There is an AUR package use your favorite package manager for AUR to get it.

For all the other Linux distribution there is an AppImage package on the official website available for download.

Etcher Usage

Etcher.io usage

The usage is quite straightforward (as shown in the image):

  1. Select an image: to burn onto the drive. There are many supported formats including iso, img, zip and gzip.
  2. Select a drive: that you wish to use as a bootable medium. Remember this drive will be completely erased.
  3. Flash!: press this button to start flashing the drive, once the process is complete you can eject the drive and use it.

That’s all there is to it! No further steps, as easy as shown in the figure. You can also replicate the same workflow on every operating system since etcher is cross-platform.

Image courtesy of resin.io

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mark

The IT guy with a little boredom look in his eyes, fond of computers since forever he now works as a freelancer in the IT and shares his experiences through this blog.

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