# 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 `dd` utility to write the image: `dd if=path-to-image of=/dev/sdX`. Be careful about specifying the correct drive; you can use the `lsblk` command to get a list of block devices.

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

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