How to Create Ubuntu Bootable USB in Windows 7,8 or 10

This tutorial will help you to create a bootable USB drive of Ubuntu in Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1 or Windows 10. After creating a bootable USB you can use this as Live USB or install on disk.

Requirements

You are required following things to create Ubuntu bootable USB in Windows systems.

• USB Drive
• Ubuntu ISO
• Universal USB Installer application
• A Windows System to create boot disk

Step 1 – Download Ubuntu ISO

Download the Ubuntu operating system from its official website. You can download any required version of Ubuntu.

Step 2 – Install Universal USB Installer

For this tutorial, I am going to use Universal USB Installer utility on Windows to create bootable USB drive. Use the below link to download this tool and install on your Windows 8/8.1 or Windows 10 system.

Step 3 – Create Ubuntu Bootable USB

At this stage, You have installed Universal USB Installer on your system. Also have downloaded Ubuntu system ISO image. Now start process of creating Ubuntu bootable USB.

Start Universal USB Installer and select following options.

• Step 1: Select Ubuntu
• Step 2: Browse and select Ubuntu ISO image from your system.
• Step 3: Select the USB drive

Now click on Create button:

Installation process is in progress.

Wait for the installer complete the process. This process will take time as per your operating system speed.

After completing the process, You will see the screen like this.

Your Ubuntu bootable USB is ready to use. Use this USB to use as live Ubuntu media or install Ubuntu operating system on your system.

How to Create a Bootable Windows 10 USB on Ubuntu

Learn how to create a bootable Windows 10 USB on Ubuntu and Linux Mint using a free application called ‘WoeUSB’.

While I don’t use Windows 10 often I do know that, every now and then, I might have need to. And should I need to create a bootable Windows 10 USB I’d like do it from my Ubuntu desktop.

Now, the method I show you in this post is just one of several ways to perform this particular task. So while I think it’s the easy way to create a bootable Windows 10 USB (one that actually boots) it’s not the only way.

How to Create Bootable Windows 10 USB on Ubuntu

WoeUSB is the (oddly named) app we are going use to make a bootable Windows 10 USB stick on the Ubuntu desktop. It’s a fork of an earlier tool called WinUSB.

This tool is free, open-source software. It is available as both a GUI app and CLI client. In this tutorial we only focus on the GUI steps.

WoeUSB lets you make a bootable USB for most modern Windows releases, including Windows Vista, Windows 7, Window 8, and Windows 10. The tool supports all languages and all versions of Windows, including pro, home, N, 32-bit, etc. It will work with both ‘legacy’ and ‘UEFI’ bootmodes, too.

For advanced usage you can dive in to the WoeUSB CLI which has all sorts of flags and switches. Most of you will be fine using the GUI client though.

To create a bootable Windows 10 USB on Ubuntu you will need:

• WoeUSB app
• USB flash drive (4GB minimum)
• Windows 10 .iso file

Microsoft lets you download Windows 10 disc images from their website so if you don’t have one, you can go grab one. Be aware that you will need a valid Windows license to activate and use the OS, but you don’t need one to create an install USB or install it.

1. Install WoeUSB on Ubuntu

WoeUSB is no longer actively maintained so you can no longer download the tool from its Github page.

The easiest way to install WoeUSB on Ubuntu is to use the following PPA. This repo provides pre-built packages of WoeUSB for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS:

Installers for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (32-bit) are also available.

2. Run WoeUSB

Once WoeUSB is installed you can launch the app from the applications menu on your desktop.

The app is very easy to use.

First, select a valid Windows 10 ISO image using the file selector, and then select the correct USB drive you want to install it to from the ‘Target device’ section.

If you don’t see your USB device listed in the ‘Target device’ section make sure it’s attached and then click the ‘refresh’ button to update the list of attached devices.

3. Create Windows 10 Bootable USB

Once you’re ready to roll you can go ahead and hit install.

But before you do this please, please double-check that you’ve selected the correct drive first. The install process will reformat and wipe the contents of the selected USB drive. You will lose any data stored on it.

Other than that, the tool will do the rest. Just let it run its course. Once done you can close the app, eject the USB and use it to install Windows 10 on a different device.

Everything should work as normal — though I’m told the app may spit an error out but the USB will still boot/install fine — but if it doesn’t you can file bugs on the WoeUSB Github page.

Home » How To » How to Create a Bootable Windows 10 USB on Ubuntu

Ubuntu Documentation

Outline

The general procedure to install Ubuntu (or Ubuntu flavour, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, . ) from a USB flash drive is:

Get the correct Ubuntu installation file, ‘the iso file’, via this link or Ubuntu flavour via this link. Download the iso file into your running computer (for example into the directory Downloads in the internal drive, not into the USB flash drive that you want to make into a USB boot drive).

Check with md5sum (or another checksum tool) that the download was good.

Put Ubuntu onto your USB flash drive alias ‘stick’ alias ‘pendrive’ alias ‘thumb’. Tools for this purpose are described in this help page.

Configure your computer to boot from USB flash drive and boot from it.

Try Ubuntu (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, . ) before installing it.

Install Ubuntu to your internal drive (hard disk drive or solid state drive or external drive).

See also: Installation/FromUSBStickQuick for beginners starting from Windows.

Introduction

Ubuntu can be installed from a USB flash drive. This may be necessary for most new portable computers without DVD drives and is handy for others because a USB flash drive is so convenient. Also, you can configure Ubuntu on the USB flash drive to save changes you make, unlike a read-only CD/DVD disk.

Booting from a USB flash drive created with usb-creator alias Startup Disk Creator and mkusb will behave just as if you had booted from the install CD. It will show the language selection and then the install menu, from which you can install Ubuntu onto the computer’s hard drive or launch the LiveCD environment. Other utilities, e.g. UNetbootin, may create slightly different boot drives or if on UEFI might not work at all with Debian iso files due to a bug

Note: This article uses the term «USB flash drive» alongside USB stick, USB drive, USB device, USB pendrive and thumb drive.

Prerequisites

To create a USB installation device, you will need:

a 4 GB USB flash device/drive/stick. If the iso file is smaller than 2 GB, it is possible to use a 2 GB USB device, at least with some of the methods. Files on this USB device will be erased, so backup the files you want to keep before making the device bootable. Some of the tools require that this USB device is properly formatted and mounted while other tools will overwrite whatever is on the target device. Please follow the instructions for each tool.

an Ubuntu flavour ISO file downloaded from an official web page, ubuntu.com/download or http://releases.ubuntu.com, stored in your running computer (for example in the directory Downloads in the internal drive, not in the USB flash drive that you want to make into a USB boot drive).

Check with md5sum (or another checksum tool) that the download was good. In Linux there is the tool ‘md5sum’. In Windows you can do it with Rufus: click on the circle with a tick mark (more about Rufus here.)

Dummy headlines

After a major remake of this help page the following headlines are kept here because they may be linked to from other web sites. Several other headlines further down in the page are also kept for this reason.

Notes about speed

Notes about size

Notes about bootability

The flash hardware

There is a detailed description at the sub-page /pre

Creating a bootable Ubuntu USB flash drive from Windows

There are various methods available for Windows to create a bootable Ubuntu USB flash drive.

NEVER try to use one of your hard disk drives or partitions in this process unless you really know what you are doing, as data will get erased.

Rufus

Rufus is the tool in Windows that is recommended officially by Ubuntu. A tutorial is available from here.

balenaEtcher

Pendrivelinux’s Universal USB Installer

UNetbootin

Win32 Disk Imager

There is a detailed description at /fromWindows including Rufus, balena Etcher, Universal USB Installer, Unetbootin and Win32 Disk Imager.

Creating a bootable Ubuntu USB flash drive from Ubuntu

Install and run Startup Disk Creator alias usb-creator

The Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator is dedicated to creating USB boot drives for Ubuntu and Ubuntu family flavours (Kubuntu, Lubuntu . Xubuntu).

Use another tool (e.g. ‘UNetbootin’ or ‘mkusb’), if you want to create a USB boot drive with another Linux distro (alias Linux operating system).

You can find usb-creator-gtk by typing «Startup Disk Creator» (Ubuntu Desktop) or usb-creator-kde in K-Menu—>Applications—>System—>Startup Disk Creator (Kubuntu). If it is not there, then you can install it using the Ubuntu Software Center.

• Insert and mount the USB drive. Inserting the USB drive should auto-mount it.
• Start the Startup Disk Creator
• In the top pane of the Startup Disk Creator, pick the .iso file that you downloaded.
• If the .iso file isn’t listed, click «Other» to locate and select the .iso file that you downloaded.
• In the bottom pane of the Startup Disk Creator, pick the target device, the USB flash drive. If more than one choice, please check carefully, until you are sure that you will be writing to the correct device.
• After checking that you are pointing to the correct target device, the USB flash drive, you can start the action.

You must enter a password because this is a risky operation. Use the password of the current user ID (the same as for login and running tasks with 'sudo'. Password is not required when installing from a ‘live’ system (booted from a DVD disk or another USB flash drive).

The Startup Disk Creator clones the iso file, which means that you need neither erase nor format the target drive. It will be completely overwritten anyway by the cloning process. The Startup Disk Creator looks like this in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS:

Notes

NEVER try to use one of your hard disk drives or SSDs or partitions in this process unless you really know what you are doing, as data will get erased.

There are bugs that affect the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator, when you run it in old Ubuntu versions in BIOS mode and try to create USB boot drives with other versions. In the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator version 0.3.2 in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, these bugs are no longer a problem, so you can install any version of the Ubuntu flavours from 16.04 LTS and newer versions.

UNetbootin

Download UNetbootin

UNetbootin works in and with most Linux distros.

It is an extracting tool (not a cloning tool).

It can make a persistence file up to 4GB in size to save data and defaults.

mkusb — dd image of iso file to USB device safely

If you want to clone from a general image file to a drive, you can use mkusb. It lets you clone to any drive that is not busy, also an internal drive, and there are very obvious warnings to prevent mistakes.

mkusb can also

• run in Debian and many linux distros that are similar to Ubuntu and Debian,
• clone from iso files of most Linux distros to create USB boot drives,
• create persistent live drives of the Ubuntu family and Debian, using all available drive space for persistence and/or data storage,
• restore a USB boot drive to a standard storage device.

There is a detailed description at /fromUbuntu including the Startup Disk Creator, UNetbootin and mkusb.

Creating a bootable Ubuntu USB flash drive from Mac OSX

There is a good wiki page about booting with UEFI, and a good tutorial thread, UEFI Installing — Tips.

Test if running in UEFI mode

You may want to test if your Ubuntu flavour is running in [U]EFI mode. An installed system and a live system too is using the directory /sys/firmware/efi, so you can run the following command line,

The following command line is more robust and also easier to understand, so you may prefer it (if you copy & paste and are not bothered by typing a long command line),