.. _sec-booting-from-usb:

Booting from a USB Drive
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For systems without CD drive, the NixOS live CD can be booted from a USB
stick. You can use the :command:`dd` utility to write the image:
:command:`dd if=*path-to-image*
of=*/dev/sdX*`. Be careful about specifying
the correct drive; you can use the :command:`lsblk` command to get a
list of block devices.

.. note::

   On macOS
   ^^^^^^^^

   ::

       $ diskutil list
       \[..]
       /dev/diskN (external, physical):
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       \[..]$ diskutil unmountDisk diskN
       Unmount of all volumes on diskN was successful$ sudo dd if=nix.iso of=/dev/rdiskN

   Using the 'raw' :command:`rdiskN` device instead of
   :command:`diskN` completes in minutes instead of hours. After
   :command:`dd` completes, a GUI dialog "The disk you inserted was
   not readable by this computer" will pop up, which can be ignored.

The :command:`dd` utility will write the image verbatim to the drive,
making it the recommended option for both UEFI and non-UEFI installations.