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# Booting from a USB flash drive {#sec-booting-from-usb}
The image has to be written verbatim to the USB flash drive for it to be
bootable on UEFI and BIOS systems. Here are the recommended tools to do that.
## Creating bootable USB flash drive with a graphical tool {#sec-booting-from-usb-graphical}
Etcher is a popular and user-friendly tool. It works on Linux, Windows and macOS.
Download it from [balena.io](https://www.balena.io/etcher/), start the program,
select the downloaded NixOS ISO, then select the USB flash drive and flash it.
::: {.warning}
Etcher reports errors and usage statistics by default, which can be disabled in
the settings.
:::
An alternative is [USBImager](https://bztsrc.gitlab.io/usbimager),
which is very simple and does not connect to the internet. Download the version
with write-only (wo) interface for your system. Start the program,
select the image, select the USB flash drive and click "Write".
## Creating bootable USB flash drive from a Terminal on Linux {#sec-booting-from-usb-linux}
1. Plug in the USB flash drive.
2. Find the corresponding device with `lsblk`. You can distinguish them by
their size.
3. Make sure all partitions on the device are properly unmounted. Replace `sdX`
with your device (e.g. `sdb`).
```ShellSession
sudo umount /dev/sdX*
```
4. Then use the `dd` utility to write the image to the USB flash drive.
```ShellSession
sudo dd if=<path-to-image> of=/dev/sdX bs=4M conv=fsync
```
## Creating bootable USB flash drive from a Terminal on macOS {#sec-booting-from-usb-macos}
1. Plug in the USB flash drive.
2. Find the corresponding device with `diskutil list`. You can distinguish them
by their size.
3. Make sure all partitions on the device are properly unmounted. Replace `diskX`
with your device (e.g. `disk1`).
```ShellSession
diskutil unmountDisk diskX
```
4. Then use the `dd` utility to write the image to the USB flash drive.
```ShellSession
sudo dd if=<path-to-image> of=/dev/rdiskX bs=4m
```
After `dd` completes, a GUI dialog "The disk
you inserted was not readable by this computer" will pop up, which can
be ignored.
::: {.note}
Using the 'raw' `rdiskX` device instead of `diskX` with dd completes in
minutes instead of hours.
:::
5. Eject the disk when it is finished.
```ShellSession
diskutil eject /dev/diskX
```
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