<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xml:id="sec-booting-from-usb">
  <title>Booting from a USB Drive</title>
  <para>
    For systems without CD drive, the NixOS live CD can be booted from a
    USB stick. You can use the <literal>dd</literal> utility to write
    the image: <literal>dd if=path-to-image of=/dev/sdX</literal>. Be
    careful about specifying the correct drive; you can use the
    <literal>lsblk</literal> command to get a list of block devices.
  </para>
  <note>
    <title>On macOS</title>
    <programlisting>
$ 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 bs=1M
</programlisting>
    <para>
      Using the 'raw' <literal>rdiskN</literal> device instead of
      <literal>diskN</literal> completes in minutes instead of hours.
      After <literal>dd</literal> completes, a GUI dialog &quot;The disk
      you inserted was not readable by this computer&quot; will pop up,
      which can be ignored.
    </para>
  </note>
  <para>
    The <literal>dd</literal> utility will write the image verbatim to
    the drive, making it the recommended option for both UEFI and
    non-UEFI installations.
  </para>
</section>
