I downloaded an image (.iso
) to write it to a USB flash drive. The flash drive was connected to a USB hub, and I also had an external hard drive connected to the USB port of the laptop. After finishing the process, the image was written to the external hard drive instead of the USB flash drive. What could have happened?
I have already read that many people have had problems with USB hubs and Ubuntu, and this might fit into the same category. My USB hub is unpowered.
The listing of lsblk
(before the problem, sdb
had an XFS partition on it):
NAME TRAN TYPE RM SIZE MOUNTPOINT
sdb usb disk 0 931.5G
└─sdb1 part 0 16G [SWAP]
sr0 sata rom 1 1024M
sdc usb disk 1 3.7G
└─sdc1 part 1 3.7G /media/user/D609-ADCE
sda sata disk 0 298.1G
├─sda2 part 0 227.7G /home
├─sda3 part 0 2G [SWAP]
└─sda1 part 0 68.4G /
The command used to write the iso file was this:
sudo dd bs=4M if=/home/user/lnximg.iso of=/dev/sdc
dd
is a very powerful but also a very dangerous tool. It does what you tell it to do without any question. So if you tell it to overwrite your family pictures it will do it, and a minor typing error is enough for it to happen. It deserves the nickname 'Data Destroyer'. - Please use a tool with a final checkpoint, so that you can double-check that you are pointing to the correct target device. Unetbootin is such a tool. Other tools are the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator, Disks (aliasgnome-disks
),mkusb
, and in Windows Rufus and Win32 Disk Imager.