How do I burn an ISO on a USB drive on Mac OS X?
2014-01
what's the best way to get an ISO "burned" to a USB stick on a Mac? Restoring using Disk Utility does not work.
The ISO is ubuntu mini.iso. It is the minimalist install ISO for installing ubuntu. It needs to be bootable on a PC. I am trying to install ubuntu on a PC that has no CD-ROM. The only other computer I have around is a macbook.
Directly from the Ubuntu download page (my formatting):
- Download the desired file
- Open the Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities/ or query Terminal in Spotlight)
- Convert the .iso file to .img using the convert option of hdiutil (e.g.,
hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o ~/path/to/target.img ~/path/to/ubuntu.iso
) - Note: OS X tends to put the .dmg ending on the output file automatically. Remove the .dmg extension as necessary,
mv ~/path/to/target.img{.dmg,}
- Run
diskutil list
to get the current list of devices - Insert your flash media
- Run
diskutil list
again and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g./dev/disk2
) - Run
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN
(replaceN
with the disk number from the last command; in the previous example,N
would be 2) - Execute
sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m
(replace/path/to/downloaded.img
with the path where the image file is located; for example,./ubuntu.img
or./ubuntu.dmg
). - Using
/dev/rdisk
instead of/dev/disk
may be faster.- If you see the error
dd: Invalid number '1m'
, you are using GNUdd
. Use the same command but replacebs=1m
withbs=1M
. - If you see the error
dd: /dev/diskN: Resource busy
, make sure the disk is not in use. Start the 'Disk Utility.app' and unmount (don't eject) the drive.
- If you see the error
- Run
diskutil eject /dev/diskN
and remove your flash media when the command completes - Restart your Mac and hold down Alt while the Mac is restarting to choose the USB stick
Note: On newer Macs you might have to install an EFI boot manager to boot from USB.
I had a very similar problem that none of these answered.
It's worth checking out UNetbootin. It will create a bootable USB disk on a Mac for a PC.
- Ensure the USB Key is properly formatted (Master Boot Record, FAT32 - if necessary NTFS using NTFS-3G)
- You can try using the Restore feature in Disk Utility by clicking on the USB key's volume, then clicking on the Restore tab and choosing the ISO to restore onto it.
- If step 2 fails, you can do this manually by running
ditto
orcp -r
; eg.ditto /Volumes/NAME_OF_MOUNTED_ISO /Volumes/NAME_OF_USB_KEY
orcp -r /Volumes/NAME_OF_MOUNTED_ISO /Volumes/NAME_OF_USB_KEY
to manually copy all the files (including hidden ones)
I've user SuperDuper for this task before. It does the job and not much else. Like a good program should :-) The full version is not free ($30) but you get what you need for free:
You can download SuperDuper! v2.6.2 right now and back up and clone your drives for free— forever!
The way to do this using DiskUtility is to first format the drive using Diskutility and then copy over the files from the mounted iso to the newly formated drive using cp -R. Ex: cp -R /Volumes/mounted_iso/* /Volumes/formated_drive/
When formatting be sure to pick the ntfs file system and make the disk bootable by picking the correct option from the Options menu in the erase tab.
You do need the boot sectors, copying like this will work with some apps but not with a Windows ISO essential files cannot be copied, the image needs converting. ISO and IMG are different animals.
I am looking to create a USB flash drive that I can put multiple live CD ISO images on and select which boots from startup. The ideal candidate supports Linux and Windows-based ISO images, and is relatively simple. It also must have some reasonable process for adding and removing an ISO image from the drive/list.
Things that I'm not looking for in this specific question:
- UBCD4Win or other swiss-army knife live CDs. The point is to boot any one of multiple CDs, not to boot a (certainly useful) utility CD.
- Installing a single live CD to a USB drive. I'd like to have multiple ISO images, selectable at startup.
I don't have a specific purpose in mind, possibilties include a single drive with a Knoppix variant, Ubuntu desktop, UBCD4Win for DOS, the Offline NT Password Cracker, etc.
Flexible and easy to use are the name of the game!
This is an interesting question. I can see it being very useful to have a single USB "master" LiveCD, instead of having so many different DVDs and pen-drives scattered around.
There seem to be a number of different approaches to this, all of them doable:
YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator (Windows) also allows you to do it. Once set up, all you have to do is put the ISO image file on the drive.