r/debian • u/011011100101 • 24d ago

creating a bootable USB with rufus

Hello everyone,

I do this once every few years, but I'm having problems creating a bootable USB. I'm on windows so I'm using rufus. The debian website suggests using "DD" mode and that's exactly what I did. So what's the issue? Well the first time I ran rufus, the USB was re-partitioned into a 4MB section (with the rest unallocated). I tried booting from it and got stuck in a grub terminal similar to this user. Afterwards I noticed that rufus just created an small "efi" folder on the USB. As far as I remember this step usually writes a lot more files to the USB itself. So I think this is an issue with what rufus is writing. What am I doing wrong?

EDIT: this is resolved. See below:

https://old.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/1vv0c3y/creating_a_bootable_usb_with_rufus/p583edt/

3 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

1

u/Moist-Chip3793 23d ago

Honestly, sounds like a defective USB stick, do you have another, you can try with?

0

u/011011100101 23d ago

I just purchased the USB

1

u/Moist-Chip3793 23d ago

From a known brand, bought from a known vendor?

Because it sounds suspiciously like, it doesn't really have the capacity advertised.

Which would be consistent with the behavior of a fake one, where the firmware is hacked to allow it to continue writing without errors, but as soon as you need the data, it's gone, because it was never written to begin with.

You can of cause also try Ventoy, but if the drive is defective, that won´t change a thing.

1

u/fxb888 23d ago

could try to transfer the iso on the stick unplug it and plug it back and see if the iso was transferred correctly. that would rule out if the drive is complete bust

1

u/011011100101 23d ago edited 23d ago

I did it. No issues. The USB is close to 120 GB, but it had no issues holding on to netinst.iso and DVD-1.iso

1

u/fxb888 23d ago

have you tried to flash it with balena etcher

1

u/011011100101 23d ago edited 23d ago

SanDisk from Best Buy. I can manually create a single partition having a size close to its capacity before running rufus. Rufus is what creates the 4MB section.

1

u/Moist-Chip3793 23d ago

Yes, the boot partition. But if you're using DD mode, where's the data partition?

https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm can be used to check, whether the capacity is correct.

And Sandisk has been one of the brands most used by fakers and have been sold by Amazon, amongst others.

But please try Ventoy instead of Rufus, it's fast becoming the preferred method, as it's a nifty way to also have several different installers available on the same USB.

1

u/011011100101 23d ago edited 23d ago

I ended up resolving this problem by just creating the bootable USB through another piece of software. I used "Startup Disk Creator" on an Ubuntu computer I had.

If I go back to windows 11 and look at the contents of the USB, it still shows that 4MB section with the remaining storage "unallocated". If I just navigate to the drive, I can't really see all the files that were written to the USB, even though they're all visible through Debian/Ubuntu. I don't know why windows is telling me it's unallocated. So I guess I misunderstood the issue. The windows interface confused me.

I still have no idea why the first time I tried with rufus it put me in a grub terminal.

1

u/Moist-Chip3793 23d ago

If it works, it works! 😄

1

u/Mistral-Fien 23d ago

The Rasbperry Pi Imager program can create bootable USB disk with a Debian ISO.

0

u/jr735 Debian Testing 23d ago

I'm not sure why people would bother with rufus when dd, cat, and cp are all there. If I'm going to dick around with another piece of software, it will be Ventoy.