Formatting USB before install

Question

I am currently using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and want to upgrade to 16.04.4 LTS through a fresh install (iso file). Creating a USB with Startup Disk Utility has some issues according to this article. So, I preferred to install 16.04.4 without the Startup Utility and merely copying install file on the USB. In which format the USB should be formatted prior to copying the iso file on it so that the PC read it on boot? (...assuming that the PC will recognize the file copied on 12.04) Thanks for your reply. Kam

Computer hardware: 64-bit

Cloning with tools, that have a final checkpoint, is very reliable. When you clone from the iso file to the USB drive, the partition table, partitions and file systems will be overwritten, so there is no reason to format the drive before. (It is different if you use an extracting tool or do it yourself (run extracting commands manually)). — sudodus, Mar 30 '18 at 06:33

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 30 '18 at 04:42

The USB device needs to have an MBR (DOS) partition table and and a fat32 filesystem before putting the ISO unto it.

Most USB come with the MBR partition table. So you just have to format to fat32. When i use dd to create my bootable drive, it causes a lot of trouble later for my flash drive. Prefer to use the non destructable method.

A quick summary of the creating of bootable

Insert an empty USB drive and identify if it has been mounted:

lsblk

then unmount the partition on the usb device and format it:

sudo umount /dev/sdXY
sudo mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sdXY

mount the partition again:

sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt

then extract the iso files to the flash drive partition:

7z x <disk.iso> -o<destination>
sudo 7z x file.iso -o/mnt

7z is a part of the p7zip-full package

When done extracting, unmount the partition:

sudo umount  /mnt

your bootable is now ready. Restart and boot into the live cd

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 30 '18 at 15:13

Reliable to clone Ubuntu iso files to USB pendrives

Cloning with tools, that have a final checkpoint, is very reliable. See this link for more details,

Can't boot from USB drive after copying iso with dd

When you clone from the iso file to the USB drive, the partition table, partitions and file systems will be overwritten, so there is no reason to format the drive before. (It is different if you use an extracting tool or do it yourself (run extracting commands manually)).