If using a version of Windows newer than 7, make sure you unmount the USB drive first (formatting it prior to launching the disk copier is one way to accomplish that), otherwise Windows might refuse to write on the stick, bailing out with the "can't write to drive" error message. If you are experiencing problems installing CentOS from a USB stick and you used a utility other than dd on linux or the 4 listed above as 'working', then recreate it with one known to work before you try anything else.
HOW TO INSTALL LINUX ON USB KEY INSTALL
This procedure allows a CentOS install without network connectivity and with no media other than a bootable USB device and the target system disk.ĬentOS release 6 (6.5 or newer) and CentOS 7 and 8 Many recent systems, particularly netbooks and small notebooks, may not have a CD or DVD drive and a network install may be difficult, impractical, or impossible, depending on network connectivity and installer support for the available network hardware. On linux, use the sha256sum command to do the same job. On Windows you can use the command certutil -hashfile c:\Users\JDoe\Downloads\CentOS-x86_64-dvd1.iso SHA256 to perform this checksum. You should check that your downloaded copy has a sha256sum that matches the published one to eliminate corrupted media install problems. These can be found in the release notes for each new version and also in a text file located in the same directory that you obtained the iso image from.
HOW TO INSTALL LINUX ON USB KEY FULL
The CentOS Project publishes a full list of the sha256sums for each iso file.