Why does 'dd' not work for creating bootable USB?

Posted by jdowner on Super User See other posts from Super User or by jdowner
Published on 2012-04-01T12:33:37Z Indexed on 2012/04/01 17:34 UTC
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linux

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dd

Recently I wanted to create a bootable USB of Linux mint. I found that there was a lot of conflicting advice/experience about whether the 'dd' command could be used to create a bootable USB. I decided to download an ISO and try. While dd definitely put the image on the USB stick it was not bootable. So my question is what is the magic ingredient that will make this work or why has this approach persisted if it does not work?

This is the command I used,

dd if=/mint/iso/image of=/dev/sdb1 oflag=direct

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