How to copy the Fedora ISO to a USB drive

Many newer, smaller laptops that are available these days no longer have an optical drive (i.e. a CD / DVD drive), so the easiest option to install Fedora on a new machine is to use a USB storage device. Fedora distributes two main types of images that allow you to install the live image ISO (approximately 1GB in size), and the install image ISO (approximately 4GB in size). When you boot into the live image, it provides a full Fedora experience so you can try it out, and then install. The install image boots straight into the installer, allowing you to install that way.

This short guide will help show you how to create a bootable USB media for Fedora by using the GNOME Disks utility provided in Fedora and other common Linux distributions.

Copying to USB with GNOME Disks GUI

  1. Insert your USB Drive, open up GNOME Disks, and choose the USB drive you just inserted from the list of disks on the left-hand side. In this example, the USB drive I inserted is the 8GB Lexar JC Firefly.

    Choosing the USB drive to install Fedora ISO

    Choosing the USB drive

  2. In the Volumes section in the main section, under the blue partition box, press the square icon to unmount the partition (in this case, the USB drive has a FAT32 partition).

    Square button unmounts the USB partition

    The square button unmounts the partition

  3. Now that the partition is unmounted, click the button with the gears on it in the top-right corner of the window and choose Restore Disk Image. Note that you will be prompted for root / superuser privileges at this step.

    Restore the disk image on the USB drive

    “Restore Disk Image…”

  4. Next, choose the DVD install ISO you want to copy over, And choose the “Start Restoring…” button.

    Start restoring the Fedora ISO to the USB drive

    Start restoring the ISO

  5. The image will now be copied to your USB drive. When the progress bar completes, you will be done! Eject the drive, and you will be all set!

    Wait for restore, then eject the USB drive

    Wait for restore, then eject

Fedora Project community Using Software

11 Comments

  1. “Note that this process will not work for the Fedora Live image. Use the Fedora Live USB Creator for that.”

    This is incorrect. The described process will work fine for the live image, and is in fact much preferred to using Live USB Creator.

    It would also be a good idea to link to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB , which has details and instructions for OSes other than Linux (and desktops other than GNOME).

    • Rick James

      Nope, doesn’t work on *ANY* of my machines. Either hangs/locks up, or prints following error message on screen:

      isolinux.bin missing or corrupt.
      Strike blah,blah.blah.

  2. Kyle Reid

    I’ve been wondering for a while where I can order a few pen drives branded with the Fedora logo like the one in the article summary image. Would you happen to know who I would need to talk to to get my hands on some?

    • Rick James

      You most likely can’t. They’ll cost too much in the very small numbers you’re talking about to produce. That image of the usb drive looks more like a cut and paste job or some other kind of altered image.

  3. Karthik

    #dd if= of=/dev/ bs=4k

    this command would work for any kind of image

    • I’m guessing you were trying to use < and > in your comment and they got stripped by the HTML rendering — so something like “dd if=<image-file> of=/dev/<disk-device> bs=4k”. To make the angle brackets work, you have to enter them like &lt; and &gt;.

  4. lekegf

    I didn’t know it could be so easy writing a iso image in an usb drive using gnome’s Disk. Worked like a charm, thank you.

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