Creating Debian Installation USB Stick

Introduction

If you are currently using a GNU/Linux distro and fancy having a look at a live disk of Debian. Use the following to get it on a USB stick to test out.

Required Commands

$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sde: 64.0 GB, 64016220160 bytes
70 heads, 32 sectors/track, 55817 cylinders, total 125031680 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x35c5644e

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sde1 * 64 2293759 1146848 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS

So, in my case /dev/sde is a 64GB USB stick. Whatever is on it will be deleted and overwritten in this procedure, so make sure that I use a stick with large enough disk capacity specifically for this purpose.

Download an ISO image for the Debian installer either directly or via a torrent.

Then copy the ISO image to the USB stick using:

$ sudo dd if=debian-live-8.4.0-amd64-kde-dektop.iso of=/dev/sde bs=4M
$ sudo sync

Then of course boot in and enjoy.