Write an ISO image to a USB drive

1. Identify the USB drive

lsblk --nodeps -o NAME,SIZE,TRAN,VENDOR,MODEL

Output Example:

NAME      SIZE TRAN   VENDOR   MODEL
sda      57.8G usb    Kingston DataTraveler 3.0
nvme0n1 953.9G nvme            KBG50ZNV1T02 KIOXIA

2. Unmount all mounted partitions on the USB drive

Replace X with the correct device letter (for example a for /dev/sda).

sudo umount /dev/sdX*

Example:

sudo umount /dev/sda*

3. Write the ISO image to the USB drive

WARNING Writing to the wrong device will permanently erase that disk.

Replace X with the correct device letter (for example a for /dev/sda).

sudo dd if=path/to/debian.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress conv=fdatasync

Example:

sudo dd if=~/Downloads/debian-13.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso of=/dev/sda bs=4M status=progress conv=fdatasync

4. Flush pending filesystem writes

sync