Prepare Installation Media

After downloading a live image, it must be written to bootable media, such as a USB drive, SD card, or CD/DVD.

Create a bootable USB drive or SD card on Linux

Identify the Device

Before writing the image, identify the device you'll write it to. You can do this using fdisk(8). After connecting the storage device, identify the device path by running:

Disk model: Your USB Device's Model Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size
(minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes ```

In the example above, the output shows the USB device as `/dev/sda`. On
Linux, the path to the device will typically be in the form of `/dev/sdX`
(where X is a number) for USB devices, `/dev/mmcblkX` for SD cards, or other
variations depending on the device. You can use the model and size (`7.5GiB`
above, after the path) to identify the device if you're not sure what path
it will have.

Once you've identified the device you'll use, ensure it's not mounted by
unmounting it with [umount(8)](https://man.voidlinux.org/man8/umount.8):

``` # umount /dev/sdX umount: /dev/sdX: not mounted.  ```

### Write the live image

The [dd(1)](https://man.voidlinux.org/man1/dd.1) command can be used to copy
a live image to a storage device. Using `dd`, write the live image to the
device:

**Warning**: this will destroy any data currently on the referenced device.
Exercise caution.

``` # dd bs=4M if=/path/to/void-live-ARCH-DATE-VARIANT.iso of=/dev/sdX 90+0
records in 90+0 records out 377487360 bytes (377 MB, 360 MiB) copied,
0.461442 s, 818 MB/s ```

`dd` won't print anything until it's completed (or if it failed), so,
depending on the device, this can take a few minutes or longer. You can
enable printing by adding `status=progress` to the command if using GNU
coreutils `dd`.

Finally, ensure all data is flushed before disconnecting the device:

``` $ sync ```

The number of records, amount copied, and rates will all vary depending on
the device and the live image you chose.

## Burning to a CD or DVD

Any disk burning application should be capable of writing the `.iso` file to
a CD or DVD. The following free software applications are available
(cross-platform support may vary):

- [Brasero](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Brasero/)  -
[K3B](https://userbase.kde.org/K3b)  -
[Xfburn](https://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfburn)

It should be noted that, with a CD or DVD, live sessions will be less
responsive than with a USB stick or hard drive.