[CentOS] Bootable USB keys : which brand ?

On 6/19/20 9:48 AM, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In my daily work I'm mainly using USB keys for work : one with CentOS 7, one
> with OpenSUSE Leap 15.1, one with Slax Live for data recovery purposes, one
> with Ghost4Linux and one with FreeDOS which I use for flashing the odd BIOS.
> 
> Last week I bought a set of three flashy colored USB keys in a local shop. To
> my surprise, none of them seem to be able to boot anything. When I write a
> bootable image (CentOS, OpenSUSE, whatever) to any one of the USB keys, the USB
> key boot option doesn't show up on any one of my sandbox PCs. Looks like I just
> learnt the hard way that some USB keys can't be used for installation purposes.
> 
> As far as I can tell, I need a set of 8 GB keys so the biggest image, the
> CentOS 8 ISO, can fit. Can you recommend a no-nonsense USB key brand which I
> can use to make a set of USB installation keys ?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Niki
> 

I have had no issues with the install ISO using dd from linux to copy
directly to the device.  Something like:

dd if=./<name.iso> of=/dev/sd<letter> bs=4M status=progress

Where 'of=' is the device // make sure NOT to use a separate partition
(so  /dev/sdb and not /dev/sdb1, but the whole device when copying the
install isos.

If you are trying to do something else (create a bootable actual
partition that runs from usb .. that should also be possible, but harder :)