CentOS 7 - Burn ISO Image To A USB Stick

A friend or colleague sees the your enjoyment and productivity using a stable, secure and reliable Operating System - CentOS 7.x. They hand you a USB stick and ask you to burn it too it, so they can install it on their own machine.

You have the latest ISO image on your machine (in the Downloads folder) and plugged in the USB stick, so here we go.

Method 01:

Open a terminal. Click on Activities in the top left corner of the screen. Next look for and click on the icons below.

Once the terminal is open. Type in the following command, then press ENTER on the keyboard.

lsblk

Output example:

Looking at the output, we can see the 8G USB stick we plugged in is device is sdb.

In the terminal, let's move into the Downloads folder by entering the command below and then press ENTER on the keyboard.

cd Downloads

We will now us an application called dd to write the ISO out to the USB stick. Enter the command below into the terminal (replacing <iso_file_name> with the real ISO file name and the <device_name> we got earlier using lsblk) and then press ENTER on the keyboard.

sudo dd if=<iso_file_name> of=/dev/<device_name>

You will be prompted for your password. Input your password and press ENTER on the keyboard.

The ISO image will now be extracted and written to the USB stick. This may take some time, so please wait until the terminal returns to the prompt.

Output example:

Method 02:

Open a disks. Click on Activities in the top left corner of the screen. Next look for and click on the icons below.

Screen 01:

The disks window.

Screen 02:

Using your mouse. Select the USB stick in the left pane of the disks window (below). Once done, you will see the information about the USB stick in the right pane of the disks window.

Screen 03 - 07:

As a precaution and to be through. Let us first remove any data and partitions off the USB stick.

At the top right of the window, look for and click on the icon shown above.

Navigate down to Format and click on it.

You will now be presented with the Format Disk dialogue (below). In the Erase drop down, select Don't overwrite existing data (quick). In the Partitioning drop down, select No partitioning (Empty). Once complete, click on the Format button at the bottom right of the dialogue.

Now you will be presented with a confirmation dialogue (below). Please review it and if you are happy, click on the Format button at the bottom right of the dialogue.

The action(s) will be performed and return you to the main disks window (below). If you look in the right pane of the window, you will now see that the USB stick is blank and of an unknown type.

Screen 08 - 12:

It is now time to write our ISO image to the USB stick.

At the top right of the window (below), look for and click on the icon shown above. Navigate down to Restore Disk Image and click on it.

You will be now presented with the Restore Disk Image dialogue (below). In the Image to Restore, click on it and navigate to the downloads folder and the ISO you wish to write to the USB stick. Once complete, click on the Start Restoring button at the bottom right of the dialogue.

Now you will be presented with a confirmation dialogue (below). Please review it and if you are happy, click on the Restore button at the bottom right of the dialogue. You will be prompted for your password. Input your password and press ENTER on the keyboard.

You will now be returned to the main disks window (below). You can view the progress of the ISO being written to the right of the window.

Once complete, you can view the new disk layout in the right side of the window (highlighted blue).

You are now done. Whichever method you used, you should have a successfully written ISO image on your USB stick.