Create Bootable USB Drives And SD Cards With Etcher On Linux

Introduction

Before we begin talking about how to create Bootable USB Drives and SD Cards with Etcher on Linux, let's briefly understand – What is Etcher?

Etcher is an efficient and user-friendly cross-platform software designed to create bootable USB drives and SD cards for installing operating systems or flashing firmware. This versatile tool simplifies the process of transferring data onto SD cards, making it convenient for upgrading your operating system, performing system diagnostics, or other similar tasks.

With a straightforward interface and support for various file formats, Etcher ensures a smooth and error-free installation experience, both for beginners and advanced users. Make the most of Etcher to easily create bootable SD cards and unleash the full potential of your devices.

In this tutorial, you will create Bootable USB Drives and SD Cards with Etcher on Linux. We will also address a few FAQs on how to create Bootable USB Drives and SD Cards with Etcher on Linux.

Install Etcher on Linux

Installing Etcher is simple because it is an Electron application.

Visit its website to download the most recent version of Etcher. Unzip the Etcher zip file by going to the location from where you downloaded it.

unzip balena-etcher-electron-1.5.120-linux-x64.zip

In the Etcher AppImage format, this will extract the Etcher zip file. Use this command to make it executable:

chmod +x balenaEtcher-1.5.120-x64.AppImage

You can now use command to launch Etcher:

./balenaEtcher-1.5.120-x64.AppImage

Install Etcher using Linux package managers

Here's how to use the package manager in your Linux distribution to install Etcher if that's how you want to do it.

For Arch Linux and its variations, Etcher can be found in the AUR. If you're using Arch Linux, you can use any AUR helper tool, like Yay, to install Etcher on Arch Linux as shown below:

 yay -S balena-etcher

Etcher can be found in Solus's default repositories. Run this to install Etcher on Solus:

sudo eopkg it etcher

Additionally, repositories for RHEL and Debian-based systems have been created by Etcher developers.

Run the following commands to add the Etcher RPM repository to Fedora, RHEL, and its clones, CentOS, AlmaLinux, and RockyLinux:

curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/balena/etcher/setup.rpm.sh' | sudo -E bash

Using the dnf package manager, install Etcher and update the software repositories:

sudo dnf update$ sudo dnf install balena-etcher-electron

Add the Etcher Debian repository to Debian, Ubuntu, and their derivatives:

curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/balena/etcher/setup.deb.sh' | sudo -E bash

Using the apt package manager, update the repositories and install Etcher on Ubuntu and Debian:

sudo apt update$ sudo apt install balena-etcher-electron

Add the following repository to the Tumbleweed and Leap editions of openSUSE:

curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/balena/etcher/setup.rpm.sh' | sudo -E bash

Next, use zypper to install Etcher on openSUSE:

sudo zypper install balena-etcher

Create bootable USB drives and SD cards with Etcher on Linux

Start the Etcher application from the menu or application launcher after inserting the USB drive or SD card. Once you've downloaded the Etcher AppImage, locate its download location and run it as shown below:

./balenaEtcher-1.5.120-x64.AppImage

Etcher's default interface will appear as follows:

Etcher gives us the ability to flash ISO images from a local drive or URL, as you can see in the output above. Here, I'll be using ISO images that I selected from my local file system.

Next, click the Select target option to choose the target USB drive.

Click the Flash button to begin constructing the bootable USB drive after choosing the target drive:

Several minutes will pass, based on how big the ISO image is. Writing an openSUSE tumbleweed ISO image of 4.9 GB took me about 8 minutes on my HP 15 GB pen drive.

It will verify the disk's contents after the image has been written there to ensure that it was written correctly. When the validation is successful, Etcher will show the "Flash Complete" message.

At this point, you can safely disconnect the USB drive and use the newly made USB bootable drive to start your computer.

Create multiple bootable USB drives with Etcher

Using Etcher, we can create multiple bootable USB drives and flash a single image onto multiple drives. Note that we are not producing USB drives with multiple boot options. Rather, we use a single image to produce multiple bootable drives.

Start Etcher by plugging in the USB drives or SD cards. Pick the target USB drives from the list and the image you wish to write.

To begin writing the image to the drives, click the Flash button.

Remove Etcher

Depending on the distribution you use, you can uninstall Etcher as indicated below if you decide it's not necessary.

Run the following to remove Etcher from Arch Linux and its variations:

sudo yay -R balena-etcher

To remove Etcher in Ubuntu or Debian, type:

sudo apt-get remove balena-etcher-electron$ sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/balena-etcher.list

To remove Etcher from RHEL and Fedora:

sudo yum remove -y balena-etcher-electron$ sudo rm /etc/yum.repos.d/balena-etcher.repo$ sudo rm /etc/yum.repos.d/balena-etcher-source.repo

To uninstall Etcher from openSUSE, execute:

sudo zypper rr balena-etcher$ sudo zypper rr balena-etcher-source

Remove Etcher from Solus:

sudo eopkg rm etcher

Just remove the Etcher AppImage if you had downloaded it.

FAQs to create Bootable USB Drives and SD Cards with Etcher on Linux

Conclusion

We hope this tutorial helped you understand how to create Bootable USB Drives and SD Cards with Etcher on Linux.

If you have any queries, please leave a comment below, and we’ll be happy to respond to them for sure.