Nov 30

Tutorial: How to boot Chrome OS from a USB drive

Chrome OS USBGoogle released the Chrome OS source and now everybody can create his own build. But how do you get your buildĀ  image file on a botable USB stick? This tutorial describes the process step by step for machines running on Windows or Linux.

It is assumed that you have your image file already on your computer. This means you have either built or downloaded it.

Windows

1. Download Win32 Disk Imager

Win32 Disk Imager a free piece of software that does the whole job for you. You can download it from here. Extract the zip file. After that, plug in your USB drive and run Win32DiskImager.exe.

2. Copy the image file to your USB drive

  1. Click the blue folder icon and select your image file.
  2. In the Device area, select the USB drive you want to copy the image to. WARNING: All data on this drive will be deleted. Please make very sure you select the proper drive letter (verify with Explorer).
    USB 01
  3. Click Write.
  4. Win32 Disk Imager copies the file’s contents onto your USB drive. Check the progess with the progress bar.

3. Proceed to the boot section below

Linux

1. Find out which device is your USB drive

Plug in your USB drive. Open up a terminal window and type fdisk -l. You’ll see an overview of all your disks and partitions. Identify your USB drive by looking for its size. In my example below, my USB drive has a size of 65 MB and is called /dev/sda. Please make sure you identify the correct one as all data on it will be lost in the following steps. Consider yourself warned. I will refer to the USB drive as /dev/USB from now on to avoid confusion.
USB 03

2. Copy the image file to your USB drive

Type dd if=image.img of=/dev/USB into your console where image.img is your image file and /dev/USB is your USB drive. Use a USB drive with a capacity of at least 4 GB.

3. Proceed to the boot section below

Boot

Once you are done copying your image onto your USB stick, you can boot from it. Switch off your computer and plug in your USB stick. Switch on your computer and enter the boot menu (F11 or F12 on most machines). Select your USB drive as boot device. That’s it.

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8 Responses to “Tutorial: How to boot Chrome OS from a USB drive”

  1. Chrome OS for Dell Mini 10v – Chrome OS-Blog.com Says:

    [...] to “dell”. A tutorial on how to get a bootable image file onto a USB stick is available here. Are you into this? Leave a reply or bookmark this [...]

  2. l104693 Says:

    Great!
    It’s a good tutorial BUT
    I don’t suggest to install it on your pc, less hardware works with it.
    I suggest to run it in VMware or something.
    I am doing that and it works great!

    Good luck with this blog!

  3. ChromeOS-Blog Says:

    @l104693:
    ad 1) It is possible to install it on your PCs hard drive, Google included a shell script to do that. But I don’t recommend it either. It runs from USB as well.
    ad 2) You can find a tutorial on how to run it in Suns free software VirtualBox at http://chromeos-blog.com/tutorial-chrome-os-virtualbox/ .
    ad 3) For me too. :-)

  4. Download: Chrome OS image for USB drives – Chrome OS-Blog.com Says:

    [...] the image to your USB drive (find a tutorial on how to do that in Windows or Linux here). A capacity of at least 4 GB is [...]

  5. deu Says:

    Hi,
    I’m trying to install jre in my chrome os as I found it possible after searching on the internet, but the problem is tht the root password, can you give me the password root(chronos) password?

  6. Casale83 Says:

    all good but on youtube i only see the sound , but i can’t see the video the screen of youtube it’s wihte.
    anyone can help me?

  7. Illa Stady Says:

    I am not new to blogging and truly appreciate your site. There is much prime content that peaks my interest. I am going to bookmark your web site and keep checking you out.

  8. K@ Says:

    Hi
    How do I change the ip address in chrome .

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