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I have a 4GB HP flash drive with FAT32 file system. I'm trying to create a bootable usb drive with an iso file: slitaz-rolling.iso [ SliTaz is a lighweight linux distro ].

I tried uNetBootin but got into this issue: UNetbootin is stuck in an “Automatic boot in 10 seconds” countdown loop. Using this tool, I'm able to write large iso files like ubuntu, lubuntu, centos, etc. but not the smaller ones like the one above.

Then I tried Startup Disk Creator which wouldn't even recognize the iso file (again, unless it's ubuntu, lubuntu, centos, or some other large distro, SDC wouldn't recognize the iso). Then I read here that changing the file extension from iso to img might work, which actually did work but after completion nothing got written to the usb drive, it was still empty. I tried a couple times but to no avail.

Then I tried the dd command, like this:

 sudo dd bs=4M if=slitaz-rolling.iso of=/dev/sdb conv=fdatasync status=progress

It runs till completion and I got this:

147046400 bytes (147 MB, 140 MiB) copied, 120.971 s, 1.2 MB/s

But when I check the flash drive, I got nothing. It's empty.

So, what should I do now? or am I missing something? please let me know. thanks.

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    You can analyze the problem according to this link, and if you are lucky, solve it.
    – sudodus
    Oct 23, 2020 at 8:19
  • try using Rufus to make the bootable usb drive.
    – user25406
    Oct 23, 2020 at 13:42

2 Answers 2

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mkusb tool worked for me. this is how I installed it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mkusb mkusb-nox usb-pack-efi
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    Thanks for sharing your solution
    – sudodus
    Oct 23, 2020 at 14:20
  • @sudodus thanks to you for commenting this link Oct 23, 2020 at 14:49
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I suggest that you may have not written the complete ISO on your USB stick. The following commandline worked for me many times before:

Be sure to have the drive unmounted!

sudo dd bs=4M if=Your/path/to.iso of=/dev/sdX status=progress oflag=sync

where sdX must be substituted. Note that oflag=sync ensures that dd returns AFTER all the data has been written on /dev/sdX...

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