Writing Install Media ​

The ISO image file must be written directly to the USB drive as a raw disk image. Simply copying the image to a formatted USB drive will not work. Each of these methods require administrator access (member of the Administrators group on Windows, or sudo access on Mac and Linux). If you do not have administrator access on your workstation, you will need to contact your IT department for assistance.

WARNING!

When following the instructions below, take extra care to ensure that you are writing to the correct drive. This process will overwrite the contents of the selected drive.

Windows ​

Writing a raw ISO image on Windows requires the use of a third-party tool. The Rufus tool available here is known to work.

Click the SELECT button and choose the .iso file being written. After selecting the .iso image file, you may leave all other settings at their defaults. Click Start.

IMPORTANT: After you click Start, a dialog box will appear asking which write mode to use. Be sure to select Write in DD image mode. Using the default ISO image mode may create an image that does not boot properly.

Mac ​

The following commands require the use of a terminal window. Open the terminal app on your Mac.

Get a list of connected drives and identify your USB drive: diskutil list

For the sake of these instructions, we'll reference the device /dev/diskX. Replace this with the actual device path in the following commands.

Mac OS may auto-mount partitions on the disk. To ensure that no partitions are mounted, run a command like this for each listed partition: sudo umount /dev/diskXsY replacing X with the disk number and Y with each partition number.

Write the image to the drive using a command like this (take note of the lowercase r just after /dev/, which indicates your intent to write to the raw drive): sudo dd if=isotope-install.iso of=/dev/rdiskX bs=1m

When the command completes, eject the drive: diskutil eject /dev/diskX

You may now remove the USB drive.

Linux ​

Insert the USB drive and use the lsblk command to inspect all connected storage devices. Identify the USB drive. For the sake of these instructions, we'll reference the device /dev/sdX. Replace this with the actual device path in the following commands.

If the lsblk command indicates that the USB drive has been auto-mounted (if the MOUNTPOINTS column is not blank), then unmount any mounted partitions. For example: sudo umount /dev/sdX1.

Copy the image onto the USB drive: sudo cp isotope-install.iso /dev/sdX

Wait until the command has fully completed before removing the USB drive.